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

Understanding the differences between our Terraform and Ansible deployments

We have discussed how we can take a cloud-agnostic approach to our deployments when using either Terraform or Ansible, as each tool has built-in functions and logic for manipulating our variables and the output of running tasks.

Some big differences should have become apparent during the code walk-throughs in Chapter 4, Deploying to Microsoft Azure, and Chapter 5, Deploying to Amazon Web Services. I am also sure you are forming an opinion on which of the two tools you prefer.

The two tools are very different in their approach, which is to be expected as they were designed to do two different tasks.

Terraform is primarily designed to manage infrastructure, whereas Ansible manages server and state configuration, which also includes a level of infrastructure management.

During my day job, I have, and continue to use, both tools – so where does the decision to use one or the other come in?

...