DevOps and IaC
Taruniyaa SInfrastructure as Code (IaC) is the practice of automating the provisioning and management of infrastructure through machine-readable files. In AWS, this is crucial for scaling and automating tasks, especially in AI-driven applications like the generative AI feature in the Travel App. By adopting IaC, you eliminate repetitive manual tasks, ensuring infrastructure changes are documented, consistent, and easily auditable.
What do we mean by Infrastructure? Isn’t the Cloud supposed to be entirely virtual?
Yes, everything is logically configured by API calls and the Cloud, indeed, is entirely virtual for you. :-)However, while we don’t interact directly with hardware or physical infrastructure, the term 'infrastructure' is still used to describe the AWS Services that run the underlying system.In the Travel App, infrastructure includes:
Compute resources: EC2 instances running your application.
Networking: Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) configurations, routing rules.
Authentication and Authorization: IAM roles and policies.
Storage: S3 buckets as data sources, Amazon DynamoDB for databases
AI: Amazon Bedrock, as the core component to get prompts and build responses
Configuration: Software installations and OS-level setups.
Note: infrastructure evolves over time. For example, upgrading from Amazon Linux 2 to Amazon Linux 2023 may require updating OS configurations, which can be cumbersome without automation.
Why Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?
Challenges of Manual Processes
Time-consuming: Manually stopping and starting EC2 instances or modifying configurations takes time.
Error-prone: Mistakes are likely when changes are applied inconsistently across instances.
Hard to scale: Managing hundreds or thousands of resources becomes impractical without automation.
Limited traceability: Manual changes lack documentation and change history.
Benefits
Documentation: Changes are described in files and stored in source control (e.g., GitHub), making them self-documenting.
Version Control: Track changes, review them with pull requests, and roll back if needed.
Scalability: Automate changes across many resources efficiently.
Error Reduction: Automation minimizes human errors during repetitive tasks.
AWS resources for IaC
| AWS Resource | Purpose | Type |
| AWS CloudFormation | Provision AWS resources using declarative templates in JSON/YAML. | Declarative |
| AWS Cloud Development Kit (CDK) | Use programming languages (e.g., Python, TypeScript) to define and provision AWS infrastructure via CloudFormation. | Declarative/Imperative |
| AWS Systems Manager | Manage EC2 configurations with tools like State Manager and Run Command. | Environment Management |
Key Takeaways
Automating infrastructure with IaC saves time, reduces errors, and enables scaling.
Using AWS tools like CloudFormation, CDK, and Systems Manager helps you manage your infrastructure efficiently.
Understanding declarative vs. imperative approaches helps choose the right tool for the task.
By adopting IaC, teams can align DevOps practices with scalable, efficient, and documented infrastructure management.
Subscribe to my newsletter
Read articles from Taruniyaa S directly inside your inbox. Subscribe to the newsletter, and don't miss out.
Written by