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

Summary

In this final chapter, we looked at three additional IaC tools, all of which work slightly differently from the two primary tools we looked at in previous chapters. So, why would you choose these over Terraform or Ansible?

In Chapter 2, Ansible and Terraform beyond the Documentation, we concluded that you should choose the best tool for the job rather than trying to fit your project to the tool; the same goes for the tools we have discussed in this chapter.

When planning your IaC project, having an excellent working knowledge of more than one tool is always a bonus; throughout this book, there have been occasions when either Terraform or Ansible hasn’t supported a task we were trying to perform, so we had to use the built-in tools that provide support for the target cloud’s API.

If you have a project in Azure, for example, where coverage for the latest services in the tools may be behind by several months, then using Azure Bicep may be the best choice...