The best practices of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) can help you automate your infrastructure and ensure consistency. When it comes to implementing an IaC strategy, there are several principles that you should consider if you want to maximize your ROI from your IT systems. What is Infrastructure as Code? Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a software development practice that aims to treat infrastructure as code. It's a collection of tools and practices that allow you to manage your infrastructure through code. IaC is used by developers to automate the provisioning, configuration, and management of computer systems on an as-needed basis. This means that IaC allows you to treat your servers like any other software product; you can version them just like any other files in your application repository and update them with new configurations at any time without having to manually change anything on physical hardware itself. Benefits of Iac: Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a continuous process that involves automating the creation, configuration and management of infrastructure. It enables you to implement IT operations with repeatable processes, which can help you quickly make changes across your entire infrastructure. This automation also makes it easier for anyone in your organization to make changes and avoid human error when deploying new servers or applications. Principles that can help you maximize your ROI from your IaC strategy As an investment in the future, IaC will pay off by helping you avoid having to manually configure new servers every time someone needs one. You’ll be able to automate repetitive tasks like updating operating systems or installing software packages on multiple virtual machines at once—and this can improve efficiency by reducing the amount of time spent on manual labor-intensive tasks like server provisioning and application deployments. Your IaC strategy should rebuild any element of your IT infrastructure with ease. In order to use IaC, you need an implementation strategy that allows you to recover from any disruption in your IT infrastructure with ease. This means that when something goes wrong with a service or application, you can easily restore it—without having to painstakingly reinstall every piece of software required for the system. IaC is about more than just configuration files; it’s also about the entire infrastructure. When implementing DevOps and automation across an organization, picking up where manual processes left off is crucial—but it may require changing how we think about infrastructure as well as how we build our systems. In other words: It’s not just about writing code; it's also about managing the entire process of building and maintaining services over time through code management tools like Ansible and Terraform. Idempotency is the property of a system that can be run multiple times without changing the result. In other words, idempotency allows you to do something once and have it happen again without having to redo the action. Imagine if you had to pay for your next meal three separate times at a restaurant. Can you imagine the frustration? Idempotency is important in automation because it ensures that the same action is performed only once. That way, if something breaks or gets interrupted, you can simply run your script again and everything will be back on track! Idempotency Have a mutable infrastructure that lives for a long time. Your infrastructure should be mutable. This means that it is possible to change your infrastructure, and you may need to make changes over time. In order to build mutable infrastructure, you can use Infrastructure as Code (IaC). IaC tools help automate the process of building and managing an infrastructure by creating files that describe how various components should be configured and deployed on a given system. For example, an application might have a Dockerfile to describe how it should be built into a container that runs in Kubernetes, or there might be some Terraform code for configuring AWS resources like EC2 instances and an S3 bucket. These files can be checked into Git repositories so other members of your team can access them easily; they are also stored on cloud platforms like Gitlab or GitHub where anyone else with access can see what steps have been taken so far towards deploying new applications or improving existing ones later on down the line when needed. Ever-evolving Design IaC is not just a design that you set up once and leave to run on its own; it’s an ever-evolving design that requires continual maintenance. You need to be able to adapt your IaC strategy as requirements change, or as you learn new things about how the infrastructure works. For example, if a malware attack exposes a security flaw in one of your systems, you might want to update the rule set for that system's role to prevent future attacks. Or perhaps there’s a new technology that makes it faster or easier for developers (or even non-developer stakeholders) to implement their ideas—you can use infrastructural automation tools like Terraform to add this new capability into the mix. You want to be able to replace the system whenever needed, by using another instance of the same system or building a new one from scratch. This is how we approach it: Disposable Systems You should be able to build your system in a way that it is disposable. The systems should be disposable. The systems should be replaced regularly. The systems should be built to be easily replaced. Make sure you can stand up another instance of your application quickly, with little effort and no downtime (ideally none). Don't hardcode values like IP addresses or machine names - use resources instead so that they can change when required (e.g., load balancers). Best Practices of IaC Explicit coding to configure files in use. Defining explicit coding is a practice of writing code that is easy to read, understand and maintain. This can be done by using descriptive names for variables and functions. Explicit coding also makes sure that there are no errors in the code. The code should be written in such a way that it can be easily modified if needed. Documentation to Minimum. Given that documentation is a crucial part to the success of infrastructure as code, it's important to ask yourself: what kinds of documentation are we going to create? Minimal documentation (ideally written in such a way that it can be understood by anyone on the team): This is probably going to be your best option. It's much easier for people to add or change information if they don't have an extensive manual sitting around. Close-to-code examples: This means that you shouldn't duplicate any code in your docs because then when someone needs help with their own code, they won't be able to find it. Instead, just include snippets that show how things should look like when you're finished coding them up and move on with life without bothering yourself with writing something comprehensive enough for newbies! Easy updateability (without having too many pages): You might think this one goes without saying but there are so many companies out there who still use .docx files instead of .md files! Make sure your team follows strict guidelines about following these principles before moving forward with anything else so no one gets stuck later down the road somewhere because someone decided not follow through on these points above." IaC allows you to track the changes in the process of deployment, so that every action can be tested. Testers are responsible for testing every change in the process of deployment. This is a very important part of any software development process, and IaC helps you with it by allowing you to track the changes in the process of deployment. It allows you to monitor the changes in the deployment process, which makes your job much easier. Microservices architecture can be applied to IaC where the modular units of code can be independently deployed. is a software design pattern that involves the use of small, independent services. These services should be loosely coupled and have a single responsibility. In other words, each service must have all the necessary data to perform its task and communicate with other services only when absolutely necessary. By applying this principle to IaC, you can create several modules that are reusable throughout your infrastructure or even across teams within your organization. Each module will contain all necessary components to perform its function and can be independently deployed without affecting other modules or systems running in parallel. Microservices architecture It will help you automate your infrastructure and ensure consistency. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a framework that allows you to automate the deployment and management of your infrastructure. IaC helps you to quickly and efficiently deploy your infrastructure. It also helps you to ensure consistency in your infrastructure, which helps reduce costs associated with managing your infrastructure.

Google

DevOps, CI/CD, and Containerization: Key to Streamline Software Delivery

Top Practices for Software Development in 2023

Read my Latest Guide on Microservices Testing Strategies


Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Bots

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Quality Assurance

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Programming

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - React

Nominated for 2022 - HackerNoon Contributor of the Year - Javascript

Nominated for 2022 - Software Developer of the Year

Too Long; Didn't Read

Make resilience your competitive advantage

Check Out the Principles and Best Practices of Infrastructure as Code for 2023

About Author

Comments

TOPICS

THIS ARTICLE WAS FEATURED IN

Related Stories

Untitled Story

Generative AI: The Future of Creativity and Problem-Solving is Here

10 Great Ways to Evaluate your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

5 Ways DevOps can make IT Infrastructure more Scalable

5 Ways to Overcome CI/CD Challenges

6 Best Practices for Infrastructure as Code in DevOps

Generative AI: The Future of Creativity and Problem-Solving is Here

10 Great Ways to Evaluate your Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

5 Ways DevOps can make IT Infrastructure more Scalable

5 Ways to Overcome CI/CD Challenges

6 Best Practices for Infrastructure as Code in DevOps

Light-Mode

Classic

Newspaper

Dark-Mode

Neon Noir

Minty

HN StartUps