Infrastructure as Code¶

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) uses a high-level descriptive coding language to automate the provisioning of IT infrastructure. This automation eliminates the need for developers to manually provision and manage servers, operating systems, database connections, storage, and other infrastructure elements every time they want to develop, test, or deploy a software application.

In an era when it’s not uncommon for an enterprise to deploy hundreds of applications into production every day—and when infrastructure is constantly being spun up, torn down, and scaled up and down in response to developer and user demands—it’s essential for an organization to automate infrastructure in order to control costs, reduce risks, and respond with speed to new business opportunities and competitive threats. IaC makes this automation possible.

IaC is also an essential DevOps practice, indispensable to a competitively paced software delivery lifecycle. It enables DevOps teams rapidly create and version infrastructure in the same way they version source code and to track these versions so as to avoid inconsistency among IT environments that can lead to serious issues during deployment.

Sai Vennam takes a closer look at IaC in the following video, “What is Infrastructure as Code?”:

Source: https://www.ibm.com/cloud/learn/infrastructure-as-code