Book Image

Infrastructure as Code for Beginners

By : Russ McKendrick
4 (1)
Book Image

Infrastructure as Code for Beginners

4 (1)
By: Russ McKendrick

Overview of this book

The Infrastructure as Code (IaC) approach ensures consistent and repeatable deployment of cloud-based IaaS/PaaS services, saving you time while delivering impeccable results. Infrastructure as Code for Beginners is a practical implementation guide that helps you gain a clear understanding of the foundations of Infrastructure as Code and make informed decisions when implementing it. With this book, you’ll uncover essential IaC concepts, including planning, selecting, and implementing the right tools for your project. With step-by-step explanations and real-world examples, you'll gain a solid understanding of the benefits of IaC and the scope of application in your projects. You'll learn about the pros, cons, and best practices of different IaC tools such as Terraform and Ansible, and their use at different stages of the deployment process along with GitHub Actions. Using these tools, you'll be able to design, deploy, and secure your infrastructure on two major cloud platforms, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. In addition, you'll explore other IaC tools such as Pulumi, AWS CloudFormation, and Azure Bicep. By the end of this book, you’ll be well equipped to approach your IaC projects confidently.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Part 1: The Foundations – An Introduction to Infrastructure as Code
5
Part 2: Getting Hands-On with the Deployment
9
Part 3: CI/CD and Best Practices

Getting hands-on with AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation is a service provided by Amazon Web Services that enables you to manage and provision your AWS resources using templates.

Of all the tools we have looked at in this book, AWS CloudFormation is the oldest, with its original public release in May 2010. Also, in the description, I described it as a service that uses templates – this all makes the approach slightly different than the other tools we have covered.

CloudFormation uses JSON or YAML templates to describe your desired AWS resources and their configurations. These templates define a stack, which is a collection of related resources that can be created, updated, or deleted together.

It provides automatic rollback and drift detection capabilities to help you maintain the desired state of your infrastructure. CloudFormation can automatically revert to the previous working state if a stack update fails. Drift detection allows you to identify and correct discrepancies...