Infrastructure as Code
Simplifying complex infrastructure deployments
What is Infrastructure as Code?
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) allows DevOps teams to automate cloud resource deployments with simple human-readable code instructions. It is as easy as writing a text file and executing it to create, delete, or modify anything from servers, containers, and apps to networks or entire environments. phoenixNAP’s Bare Metal Cloud is integrated with the most popular IaC tools to ensure streamlined platform provisioning and management.
Programmable infrastructure
Developers treat infrastructure like software, using code to define desired cloud resources and execute scripts to deploy them.
Automated cloud resource provisioning
Infrastructure as Code takes the manual work out of resource provisioning by relying on robust APIs and automation engines.
Rich open-source ecosystem
The most widely used Infrastructure as Code tools are open-source, free to use, and have a strong community behind them.
Why is Infrastructure as Code Important?
Infrastructure as Code plays a pivotal role in DevOps because it helps prevent “environment drift.” This happens when dev, staging, and production environments are not identical, resulting in failures and incompatibility issues. IaC greatly reduces the chance of deploying misconfigured infrastructure because it allows developers to replicate identical environments with a single configuration file.
How IaC Works?
There are two approaches to IaC — imperative and declarative. The imperative approach is centered around defining a sequence of commands that need to be executed to achieve desired results. The declarative approach is more flexible. It allows developers to describe the target state of the infrastructure and involves running checks to determine if the infrastructure is already in the desired state.
Install
Install the appropriate Infrastructure as Code module on your system. You do this by running a simple CLI command.
Authenticate
Create an account with your service provider and retrieve appropriate API authentication tokens.
Define
Open any code editor and create a script by defining desired infrastructure resources with simple code instructions.
Execute
Run a simple CLI command to execute the script. Sit back and relax while automation deploys your infrastructure.
Reuse
Create identical environments with the same script to ensure consistency across testing, staging, and production.
IaC Benefits and Advantages
Prevent errors and misconfigurations
Automation-driven provisioning minimizes the risk of human error and prevents deployment of misconfigured infrastructure, ensuring consistency across different types of environments.
Increase productivity
Infrastructure as Code helps DevOps teams stay productive by allowing them to focus on building software rather than manual hardware provisioning and maintenance.
Cut costs
With the option to instantly decommission unused resources across multiple providers, organizations can cut their cloud infrastructure expenses.
Maintain consistency
DevOps team can reuse configuration templates to maintain infrastructure consistency, automate repeatable tasks, and accelerate provisioning schemes.
Enhance security
Programmable infrastructure makes running continuous tests easier, enabling organizations to enforce security standards across environments more effectively..
Collaborate easily
Deployment scripts can be stored in version control systems, allowing multiple team members to review configurations, track changes, and collaborate on new deployments.
Infrastructure as Code Tools for Bare Metal Cloud?
phoenixNAP’s Bare Metal Cloud server platform comes with integrated support for a number of popular Infrastructure as Code tools. Use the Bare Metal Cloud API and CLI with any of these IaC engines to quickly deploy servers, operating systems, containers, and apps.
Terraform
Leverage Terraform’s powerful features to orchestrate Bare Metal Cloud server deployments with ease. Terraform is open-source and free to use.
Ansible
Create a more productive infrastructure deployment workflow with Ansible and eliminate repetitive tasks by writing reusable Ansible Playbooks.
Pulumi
Pulumi lets you define and deploy Bare Metal Cloud machines and other resources using real programming languages like Python, JavaScript, or Go.
Helpful Resources
Get hands-on knowledge about using Infrastructure as Code tools for Bare Metal Cloud and stay up to date with the latest IaC trends and technologies on our blog.
Try Bare Metal Cloud for as low as $0.10/hour!