Things you should know about IaC(Infrastructure As Code) in 2020

What is Infrastructure As a Code?

As we are edging towards end of 2020 (an uneventful year),  if you have been following the DevOps space or working into Cloud or DevOps domain, you would have frequently come across this term “IaC (Infrastructure As  Code)”

Infrastructure As a Code is very popular term in DevOps, aka IaaC or IaC, it is the process of managing your IT infrastructure using only configurations files(ready Code).

Let us now understand what is IaC and what is the use of IaC in DevOps?

Definition of Infrastructure As a Code

As per the Wikipedia:

Infrastructure As a Code is the process of managing and provisioning of cloud infrastructure or physical data centers through machine-readable definition files or code, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.

In simple words – Infrastructure As a Code will help you to manage your IT Infrastructure with just some lines of code. You need not have a dedicated Admin army to maintain physical infrastructure and tools for this. IaC will give you the remarkable benefits of consistency, easy & faster maintenance, low-cost management. Additionally, there is no room for those ‘Human Errors’.

IT Infrastructure management has been a critical and tedious task for any company or industry. Why? Well, you need to have a large source of human power to manage the whole infrastructure. This includes investing a huge amount of money and manpower, scalability, availability, inconsistency, and what not! Still there is always a room for ‘human mistakes’.

Benefits of IaaC: infrastructure as code has many benefits, some of them are listed below:

• Consistency: while using IaC, there is no chance of human mistakes and inconsistencies. IaC has config files to themselves. Thus, the same configurations files can be deployed seamlessly every time.
• Faster Speed: one of the  notable benefits of IaC is speed. As it only needs a script(code) to set up a whole infrastructure. Eventually, it takes lesser time and  makes the whole process much more faster and efficient.
• Reduced Cost: IaC lowers the cost of infrastructure management significantly. You do not have to spend money on manpower to manage the hardware and physical space.
• Consistent Configuration: you are able to configure files just like a simple source code file. This makes its easier to trace and track ,  all the changes in your infrastructure configuration. You don’t need to play guessing games anymore.
• Faster Software Deployment: you will be able to deploy the infrastructure in many stages. It will make the software development process more efficient. Also, this will boost the team’s productivity.

Some Popular Configuration Management Tools for IaC

• Ansible : ansible was created by RedHat Team. Designed with automation in mind, it doesn’t use agents. Ansible will run by default in Push mode. While using push mode, an SSH connection is necessary. Pull mode is also available and can be used when needed. Ansible provides a “radically simple” configuration language.  It is possible to create your own modules in Ansible. Thus, Ansible is also one of the most flexible IaC. Moreover, we can combine Ansible with other tools. Some of these tools are Jenkins, Ansible Works(AWX), RunDeck, ARA, etc.

• Terraform: developed by HashiCorp, Terraform works with multiple clouds. Terraform uses its own DSL called HashiCorp Configuration Language(HSL). HCL is JSON compatible language. You can write your own plugins in Terraform. It is completely cloud-agnostic. Terraform will help in managing large infrastructure.  Terraform automation focus on the core plan/apply cycle. It comes in various shapes. It supports the change and provisioning previews. Terraform is able to replicate deployments and individual server instances.

• Puppet: puppet is one of the older IaC tools and has been used by companies like AWS, Google Cloud, VMWare, Reddit, Dell, and Azure. Puppet has some of the most advanced interfaces. It internally uses Ruby-based DSL. Puppet has been on the market for quite a long time. The push model is by default in Puppet. However, Pull model can be configured as and when needed. You will find Puppet usually in a client-server architecture. Puppet keeps an eye on the infrastructure for changes that might affect the defined end state. It will automatically fix those changes.

• Chef: chef is again an old school tool and one of the most popular configuration management tools. Chef also uses Ruby-based DSL, just like Puppet. Chef runs on a client-server configuration. It is available as a standalone configuration, which is called ‘Chef-solo’. Chef uses ‘recipes’ and ‘cookbooks’ to run your infrastructure. You can also create your own ‘recipes’. Chef has a large user base and a full set of tools. Thus, it is possible for anyone to create recipes, regardless of technical background.

• Saltstack: SaltStack is often called ‘Salt’. Salt is used in DevOps services for IaC. Because it gathers developer code and configuration data from a central code repository. The main purpose to create Salt was for high-speed data collection. Salt uses Python modules to manage configurations and other actions. Salt works on a client-server topology. Salt masters are servers and Salt minions are clients. You can find configurations in Salt state files. These files contain every information needed to keep the system in the desired state.

• AWS Cloud Formation: AWS Cloudformation is created only for users working in the AWS Cloud. AWS Cloud Formation allows you to create templates using YAML and JSON files. Deployment of the resources is possible to do in a repeatable and manageable way using AWS, because it does have an automation feature. You will only have to pay for the resources you have used. You only need to configure the template to your application. CloudFormation will handle the rest of the tasks. Additionally, it is possible to use a single template for various regions and AWS accounts.