Infrastructure as Code
advancedTopic 9 of 11 in Cloud & DevOps
What it is
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) means defining your servers, networks, databases, and other resources in configuration files instead of setting them up manually. Tools like Terraform and Ansible make infrastructure reproducible and version-controlled.
Why cloud & devops developers need it
Manually configuring servers does not scale and leads to inconsistencies. IaC lets you version your infrastructure, reproduce environments exactly, and automate provisioning across teams.
What to learn
IaC concepts: declarative vs. imperative
Terraform: providers, resources, modules, state
Ansible: playbooks, roles, inventory
Provisioning cloud resources with Terraform
Configuration management with Ansible
State management and remote backends
Modules for reusable infrastructure
Drift detection and plan/apply workflow
Practice project
Terraform Cloud Setup
Use Terraform to provision a complete environment on AWS or GCP: a VPC, a compute instance, a managed database, and a load balancer. Store state remotely and document the setup.