For a long time, IT infrastructure has been a problem for enterprises. It requires significant investment and expertise to set up. This has traditionally made it difficult for operations to manage their IT resources at the optimal levels. They would either waste money by going over their needs or they would create problems for their teams by not investing enough in resources. This all started to change when cloud computing became widely available. With cloud computing services, you had an affordable option that made it possible to buy resources that are targeted toward your needs. Not only that, but the resources were much more flexible and they could easily scale with your operation.
While it did relieve a major issue for some enterprises, cloud computing does still have its complications. You still need to manage, monitor and configure resources. This can be time-consuming and complicated for teams that need to work on things like DevSecOps. Fortunately, solutions like Infrastructure as Code (IaC) can help to relieve some of this burden.
Solving Problems With IaC
Under conventional infrastructure management, teams or individuals would have to manually configure hardware assets as needed. This could be time-consuming and it could lead to issues with consistency within the infrastructure. It would also cause issues with transparency in the infrastructure. Since no one knew exactly what was going on throughout the entire system, it would make it difficult to solve problems. As an example, if there was a failure that shut the system down, you would need to go through a long process of elimination to find the issue and fix it.
To solve some of these issues, teams started developing scripts to automate some of the processes. However, this could cause issues as well. Scripts might be able to solve some issues with DevOps security, but you might have issues with different coders writing scripts in different ways. You might also have a range of scripts that some people on the team understand, but others may be unaware of them.
Infrastructure as Code solves many of these problems by codifying the processes that go into configuring and managing infrastructure. Instead of having different people configuring, deploying and managing resources in their own way. IaC uses code that is controlled by rules to make the job easier and the end result more consistent.
The Benefits of Implementing IaC
Whether it is security in DevOps or anything else, IaC has a lot to offer. First and foremost, it delivers on the promise that running the same command will provide the same result. Knowing what to expect every time is a real advantage.
IaC is also faster and more efficient than using manual processes. With the ability to automate management and provisioning, you can save your teams a lot of time. This can be especially useful when you need to scale a system up or down.
It also aligns better with DevOps. With codified infrastructure, teams can follow the same standardized steps for working through the CI/CD pipeline with best practices already built into the code from the beginning. It can even allow for an integration of DevSecOps from the very beginning of the development process. This can make security in DevOps more consistent and more reliable.
IaC not only makes the process more efficient and easier, it offers more reliable environments across the board. With that said, there are a lot of IaC tools available. You need to consider your needs and consult with your teams to find the tools that will offer the most for your operation.
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