Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is an approach where all environment components are described in machine-readable configurations. Instead of manual actions, administrators use scripts or templates, which simplifies repeatability, scalability, and version control. How do you typically implement IaC in your pipelines? What tools do you prefer for describing resources?
What is Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and how is it applied in DevOps?
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In my IaC projects, I typically integrate Terraform with GitLab CI/CD pipelines. The infrastructure code is stored in a separate repository, and every pull request goes through a `plan` stage—Terraform generates a plan and verifies that changes align with expectations. Only after approval does the `apply` stage run. For server and application configuration, I add Ansible playbooks, which are triggered after the provisioning stage, ensuring everything from VPC creation to container deployment is automated and tracked in Git.
When working with AWS, I sometimes use CloudFormation (or CDK), but in cross-cloud scenarios, Terraform offers better portability. I always include testing: `terraform validate`, `tflint`, and local `terraform fmt` in the linting step, and for Ansible, I use `ansible-lint`. This approach has accelerated releases by 30% and allows rolling back infrastructure to any version without the risk of "manual" errors.
I tried IaC for the first time in a small project where I used Terraform to deploy a test environment in AWS. I wrote a single `main.tf` file, spun up the entire infrastructure in a couple of minutes, and then stored the configs in Git, which made rollbacks and collaboration much easier.