The Roadmap To Learn Infrastructure as Code

The what, benefits, and best learning resources about Infrastructure as Code

What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?

Have you run into scenarios where you couldn’t figure out the changes that happened in your system's configuration?

Have you had to rely on a team of system admins to manually deploy your infrastructure?

Have you feared system failure because of any of the following issues?

• Incorrect database configuration

• Incorrect route table and load balancer configuration

• Downtime caused by accidental configuration

• Fear that your system admins will not respond in time, and you have no idea what to do if the system goes down in their absence?

This is where Infrastructure as Code (IaC) comes to your rescue.

IaC defines, provisions, and manages your infrastructure using code.

Instead of relying on system admins or executing commands manually from a CLI just to configure your system, you can use code to provision and manage your infrastructure.

This makes it easy to edit and maintain your infrastructure via code and provides better visibility into the infrastructure that was used to deploy your system.

Benefits of using IaC

There are several benefits of using IaC:

• Automation: You can automate the entire process of provisioning and deploying your infrastructure, making it faster and less error-prone than doing things manually.

• Better visibility: Because you are using code, anybody with access to the code can understand the state of the system's infrastructure rather than relying on a particular individual or team.

• Version control: You can store your code in a version control system and track changes to your infrastructure via commit history. If you want to revert changes to your infrastructure for any reason, you can easily roll back your changes.

• Infrastructure validation: Automated tests and code reviews can be performed before deploying changes.

• Third-party solutions and modules: You can also use a library of well-tested modules or solutions to integrate with your existing infrastructure as code, depending on business needs.

• Lower cost: IaC saves time and money by automating infrastructure management tasks so the team can focus on other tasks that add value.

Best resources to learn IaC

By now, I think you understand why IaC is important to manage your infrastructure.

With that in mind, how do you go about learning IaC?

You need to understand two aspects of IaC:

• Infrastructure provisioning

• Configuration management

I have compiled a list of resources that can help you get started:

Key takeaways

IaC is an important part of implementing DevOps practices and processes within an organization.

If done correctly, it makes infrastructure provisioning and management efficient by automating the repetitive tasks that would otherwise be performed manually for system setup and maintenance.

IaC also ensures configuration is consistent across various deployment environments and increases visibility into the infrastructure.

Finally, IaC reduces costs and makes developers more productive as they can focus on tasks that add more value to the business.

Stay tuned to my future newsletter issues, where I will break down some of the highest in-demand skills used in IaC.

Thanks for reading!

Talk to you next week.

Thanks for reading this issue.

Drop me a note about what topics you want me to cover. I read every single email myself!

And, let me know what you think about this issue. Comments, praise, criticism, feedback & suggestions are all welcome.

This will be a fun journey, together, and I would appreciate it if you could take a few minutes to share this newsletter with your friends, family, or anyone you think needs to know.