Infrastructure as Code (IaC) — What is it?
The explosion of public cloud platforms has made the accessibility and consumption of IT infrastructure an uncomplicated experience. The traditional IT infrastructure found in vast and expensive corporate data centers can now be consumed by anyone with an internet connection. As organizations/businesses start consuming public cloud platforms and its infrastructure you often hear the expression, infrastructure as code (IaC).
If you have ever wondered, the what, the why, and the how, in regards to IaC then you have come to the right place.
Static/Dynamic Infrastructure
Before we dive into the nuts and bolts of IaC it helps to first understand how IT infrastructure works. Let’s start with static infrastructure, think server racks, mainframes, routers, switches, firewalls, and pretty much any equipment you expect to find in a traditional data center. In this static infrastructure environment, when you need more capacity you simply add more capacity though physical provisioning, either through horizontal and/or vertical scaling. The need for physical provisioning and waiting for the compute capacity to become available is what makes this environment static.
Adding new equipment, increasing capacity, enabling new functionality, can take several several weeks (10 + weeks), from the…
