Introduction to IaC

IaC is the concept of using code to define infrastructure. While most people can visualize infrastructure as tangible, virtual infrastructure is already commonplace and has existed for around two decades. Cloud providers provide a web-based console through which you can manage your infrastructure intuitively. But the process is not repeatable or recorded.

If you spin up a set of infrastructure components using the console in one environment and want to replicate it in another, it is a duplication of effort. To solve this problem, cloud platforms provide APIs to manipulate resources within the cloud and some command-line tools that can help trigger the APIs. You can then start writing scripts using commands to create the infrastructure and parameterize them to use the same scripts in another environment. Well, that kind of solves the problem, right?

Not really! Writing scripts is an imperative way of managing infrastructure. Though you can still call it IaC...