Infrastructure as Code Tools: Managing the Cloud

Manually provisioning infrastructure simply isn't viable at the scale of modern cloud applications, and ClickOps will lead to spiralling costs and likely security vulnerabilities.

In order to effectively manage cloud infrastructure at any scale, enterprise organizations need to make use of infrastructure-as-code tools, treating their application infrastructure configuration as they would their standard application code. This new standard of resource provisioning no longer involves invoices and work orders to rack new servers, now it's clicks and API calls.

Getting this right is critically important to the long term scalability and security of application workloads. Bad implementations inevitably lead to spiraling cloud costs, technical debt, and security vulnerabilities. Cloud security standards ensures that these tools are utilized effectively, protecting the integrity and security of cloud-based systems. What options are available, and what is the right tool for an enterprise getting started on its cloud journey?

What is Infrastructure as Code Tools

Infrastructure as code tools are essential for modern organizations to efficiently manage their cloud infrastructure. These tools allow teams to define, provision, and manage infrastructure resources (like virtual machines, networks, and storage) using code, similar to how they manage application software. By treating infrastructure as code, teams can automate infrastructure provisioning and eliminate the manual processes of configuring hardware and environments.

Traditionally, provisioning infrastructure involved physical resources and long workflows, such as submitting invoices and work orders for new servers. With infrastructure as code tools, this process is now automated and executed through API calls and scripts, enabling organizations to scale more rapidly and efficiently. Instead of manual intervention, infrastructure changes can be made by simply updating the code, ensuring consistency across development, testing, and production environments.

However, implementing IaC correctly is crucial to avoid issues like technical debt, uncontrolled cloud costs, and potential security vulnerabilities. Poorly managed IaC environments can lead to configuration drift, where environments gradually diverge from their intended state, creating significant challenges for teams. To mitigate this, enterprises must adopt infrastructure as code tools that adhere to cloud security standards and follow best practices in infrastructure management.

When choosing the right tool, organizations need to consider factors such as AWS infrastructure as code compatibility, community support, and the ability to integrate with existing workflows. Tools like AWS CloudFormation, Pulumi, and Ansible offer varying capabilities that cater to different needs, from managing resources across multiple cloud providers to automating complex deployment processes.

Ultimately, selecting the right infrastructure as code tools is a key decision in ensuring long-term scalability, security, and operational efficiency in cloud environments. The correct implementation of these tools will not only streamline infrastructure management but also reduce the risk of human error, improve team collaboration, and provide the foundation for future growth.

How Does Infrastructure as Code Work?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) automates the process of managing and provisioning cloud resources using code, allowing engineers to define the desired state of their infrastructure in files. These files are then used to create, configure, and manage servers, databases, and other resources, making the process both faster and more reliable.

There are two primary approaches to IaC: declarative and imperative. In the declarative approach, you define what you want your infrastructure to look like (the "end state"), and the tool takes care of ensuring it reaches that state. In the imperative approach, you define a sequence of steps that need to be followed to achieve the desired state. A tool like  AWS CloudFormation are common example used for implementing IaC, especially in cloud environments like AWS.

Approaches to Infrastructure as Code: Declarative vs. Imperative

When implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC), two main approaches are widely used to manage cloud resources: declarative and imperative.

• Declarative Approach: In this approach, you define the desired state of your infrastructure—essentially describing what the final outcome should be. The IaC tool then takes care of determining how to achieve that state by performing the necessary actions behind the scenes. This simplifies the process, reduces human error, and helps ensure consistency across environments. Popular tools that follow this model include AWS CloudFormation, which excels at describing resources in a template format, allowing the cloud provider to automatically configure the infrastructure to match the defined state.

• Imperative Approach: This approach gives users more granular control by allowing them to specify the exact steps required to configure the infrastructure. Instead of focusing on the end result, users define how the system should achieve the final configuration. This method is commonly used when a more hands-on approach is required or when specific sequences of operations need to be followed. Tools like Ansible use this imperative style, giving users the flexibility to execute precise commands in the order they want.

Each approach has its strengths. The declarative approach is often favored for large-scale cloud deployments due to its simplicity and automation benefits. On the other hand, the imperative method provides more flexibility and control, which can be advantageous in complex or unique environments. Ultimately, the right approach depends on the specific requirements of the infrastructure and the desired level of control.

10 Benefits of Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) offers a wide range of benefits, from speeding up deployment processes to improving collaboration between teams. Below are 10 key advantages that make IaC a crucial tool for modern cloud environments:

1. Built-In Documentation
   IaC inherently creates documentation as part of the code. Since infrastructure is described in files, teams can easily reference these scripts to understand the exact configuration of resources, removing the need for separate documentation. This not only increases transparency but also makes it easier for new team members to get up to speed quickly.

2. Supports Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
   IaC integrates seamlessly with CI/CD pipelines, allowing infrastructure to be deployed and updated automatically alongside application code. This reduces downtime, ensures faster delivery, and helps maintain consistency across environments. Every time code is pushed, IaC tools ensure that the correct infrastructure is provisioned, eliminating manual intervention.

3. Increased Speed and Efficiency
   One of the primary benefits of IaC is the speed at which infrastructure can be provisioned and updated. Tasks that once took hours or even days can now be automated, completed in minutes, or even seconds. This efficiency is critical for organizations that need to scale quickly or adapt to changing market demands.

4. Seamless DevOps Integration
   By using IaC, teams can align their development and operations efforts. The process of defining and managing infrastructure as code brings infrastructure management into the same development pipeline as application code, fostering a collaborative DevOps culture. This enables a faster feedback loop, shorter release cycles, and increased innovation.

5. Streamlined Automation
   Infrastructure as Code automates repetitive tasks, such as provisioning, configuring, and managing infrastructure resources. This not only reduces the likelihood of human error but also allows teams to focus on higher-level strategic tasks. Automation helps to ensure that infrastructure is always provisioned consistently, following predefined standards.

6. Ensures Compliance with Industry Standards
   IaC ensures that infrastructure configurations adhere to predefined best practices and industry standards. By defining infrastructure through code, organizations can implement policies and checks that ensure compliance with security protocols, governance, and operational guidelines. This is especially important in regulated industries, where strict compliance is necessary.

7. Version Control and Auditing
   Because IaC is managed as code, it benefits from the same version control capabilities used for software development. Changes to infrastructure can be tracked, reviewed, and rolled back if necessary. This makes it easier to audit changes, identify potential issues, and ensure that configurations remain consistent across environments.

8. Improved Scalability and Flexibility
   IaC enables infrastructure to scale quickly and efficiently. Whether you need to increase computing power, add storage, or extend to new regions, IaC allows you to automate the scaling process. This flexibility is essential for organizations that operate in dynamic environments where scaling up or down is a frequent requirement.

9. Optimized for Day 0, Day 1, and Day 2 Operations
   IaC supports the entire lifecycle of infrastructure management, from initial deployment (Day 0) to ongoing maintenance and updates (Day 1), and continuous optimization (Day 2). By automating infrastructure at every stage, organizations can ensure smooth operations while minimizing the operational burden on their teams.

10. Promotes Cross-Team Collaboration
    IaC fosters collaboration between development, operations, and security teams. Since infrastructure is now treated as code, all teams can contribute to and review the same codebase. This creates a shared responsibility for infrastructure management, helping to break down silos and encouraging better communication and cooperation.

Cloud Computing and Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and cloud computing are a perfect match, enabling organizations to scale and manage their cloud based infrastructure efficiently. Cloud platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure provide native IaC tools, like AWS CloudFormation and Azure Resource Manager, which allow users to provision and manage their infrastructure using code.

IaC enables cloud environments to be highly scalable, automated, and consistent, reducing the risk of human error. By integrating IaC with cloud platforms, organizations can leverage the power of automation to deploy infrastructure across multiple regions or even cloud providers, ensuring business continuity and disaster recovery readiness.

Infrastructure as Code Tools

Various Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools help automate cloud resource management, each serving a specific role in the process. Here’s an overview:

• Configuration Management Tools: Tools like Ansible and Chef help manage the configuration of servers by enforcing a desired state, ensuring consistency across the infrastructure.

• Orchestration: Tools like Kubernetes manage the deployment and scaling of containerized applications, making it easier to orchestrate complex infrastructures.

• Provisioning: Terraform and AWS CloudFormation enable the provisioning of infrastructure resources, automating tasks such as setting up virtual machines or cloud storage.

• Immutable Infrastructure: Tools like Docker and AWS Lambda ensure that each deployment is isolated and repeatable, avoiding configuration drift.

• Version Control Systems (VCS): Git-based tools ensure infrastructure code is tracked, allowing rollbacks, auditing, and collaboration.

• Secrets Management: Vault and AWS Secrets Manager secure sensitive data such as API keys and passwords within the infrastructure code.

• Container Management: Docker and Kubernetes facilitate packaging, deployment, and management of applications in containers for consistent environments.

• Monitoring and Compliance: Tools like Prometheus and AWS Config ensure continuous monitoring and enforce compliance with security and operational standards.

Previous Generation Tooling

The previous generation of infrastructure-as-code (IaC) tooling was based on a concept known as configuration management (CM). Software such as: CFEngine, Puppet, Chef, Ansible, and Salt are generally the most well-known and broadly deployed CM systems. They enabled system administrators and infrastructure engineers to automate configuration of large numbers of servers far more efficiently than previous, manual processes.

This model of infrastructure management involved the user first defining a desired state in code. This could be the presence of a specific configuration file, or user accounts, or the installation of versioned OS packages or application dependencies. This desired state was then assigned to different servers based on roles; web servers might have a web configuration, backend servers would have specific configurations, and so forth.

Periodically, the tool would run to verify the infrastructure was in compliance with that state. If the state of the resource was not in compliance, the tool would take steps to converge on that state. For example, if a server was missing a software package or dependency, the CM tool would take action to install it.

If CM was such a leap forward in terms of enabling large-scale infrastructure management, why has the tech industry largely moved on? One of the core issues is that nearly every major tool in the space was designed and released prior to the broader adoption of the cloud as a first-choice destination for software infrastructure. The core logic design of these tools presupposed that the servers that they would be managing would already be deployed out-of-band.

The primary mechanism of automation in a CM tool is either an installed agent, or agentless (via SSH) interaction with the target servers; the API-driven design of cloud platforms means additional features have been grafted on. Additionally, as the complexity of CM-managed systems grew, the configurations became brittle and difficult to manage.

The accumulation of changesets and drift over time meant that the infrastructure was not immutable, and this growing tech debt left admins afraid to make changes for fear of unintended outages or regressions. The newer generation of cloud-first tooling has been built to address the needs of infrastructure-as-code at scale, while solving the issues that plagued CM systems.

How to Implement Infrastructure as Code

Implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) requires careful planning and the right tools. The following steps outline the process:

1. Select the Right Tools: Choose tools that align with your cloud provider (e.g., AWS CloudFormation for AWS) or multi-cloud needs (e.g., Azure, and Google Cloud).

2. Define the Desired State: Use a declarative approach to describe the infrastructure you want, specifying the configuration for compute, storage, networking, and more.

3. Version Control Your Code: Store your IaC scripts in a version control system (VCS) like Git, enabling collaboration and rollback options.

4. Test Your Configurations: Run tests on a smaller scale or within sandbox environments to verify your configurations before deploying to production.

5. Automate Deployments: Use CI/CD pipelines to automate infrastructure provisioning and configuration updates, ensuring consistency across environments.

6. Monitor and Optimize: Continuously monitor your infrastructure using tools like AWS CloudWatch to ensure everything operates as expected, and make adjustments when necessary.

How to Choose Infrastructure as Code Solutions?

Choosing the correct path forward in managing cloud resources depends on the resources available and the timeline for implementation. Before the hard work begins, it's essential for companies to take a moment and talk about what resources are needed in order to reach their objectives, any staff or other resource gaps that could be an issue, and when they'd like the implementation to be able to meet user SLAs.

If an enterprise has:

• Ample access to DevOps or cloud-experienced personnel and resources OR

• An 18-24 month timeline to hire, train, plan and implement the project

...then an in-house solution using Terraform is a good choice. As mentioned in the previous section, the broad support and resources available, as well as its ubiquity in the industry make it a great choice and provides solid opportunities to either hire experience or engineers, or train existing ones. 

It's important to understand that for enterprises coming from traditional, non-cloud environments, there needs to be a considerable investment in building outprocess, skills, staff, and a nearly complete overhaul of the operational and engineering culture. Traditional environments often treat infrastructure and software as two very distinct silos with distinct modes of operation. Building on a cloud platform using DevOps methodologies means breaking down those silos and adopting agile software development practices for both. 

For many teams, this will not be an easy or quick transformation. Trying to take shortcuts will lead to inefficiencies, cost-overruns, and security vulnerabilities.

If an enterprise has:

• Leaner/smaller teams

• Shorter timelines (3-12 months)

• Little stakeholder support for internal transformation

...then a batteries-included Platform-as-a-Service (PAAS) might be a better solution. Developers can package their code into a ubiquitous artifact, such as a Docker container, and ship directly into the platform while having to make few modifications to their existing development workflow. This approach means developers can stay productive; feature iteration and customer experience doesn't suffer while engineering teams pivot to adopt cloud operations.

Going to the Cloud with Infrastructure-as-Code Means Transformation

When faced with a lack of available capacity, resources, personnel or enthusiasm for change, enterprise organizations should strongly consider not reinventing the wheel. They'll end up with half-baked cloud deployments with abundant mis-configration, inconsistencies, and security flaws. Cloud infrastructure support becomes crucial in such scenarios.

When done correctly, infrastructure-as-code can unlock massive scaling and efficiency potential in any cloud deployment, and many of the most successful technology and software companies rely on it heavily. However, it is a significant cultural, operational and process transformation that may require significant investment and dependence on outside resources. Platform-as-a-service offers a great way to take advantage of the scaling and performance offered by the cloud without the operational burden.