IaC tools are software utilities that help in implementing Infrastructure as Code – a practice of managing and provisioning infrastructure through machine-readable definition files rather than hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.
The ‘infrastructure’ in ‘Infrastructure as Code’ could include networks, virtual machines, containers, applications, or practically any other component of a modern computing environment.
Implementing IaC means writing code to define your infrastructure, in the same way you would write code for any software application. IaC tools automate the process of setting up, modifying, and maintaining the IT infrastructure. They are the key to efficient infrastructure management, enabling businesses to deliver stable environments rapidly and at scale.
Below are top 5 Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools you should use:
- Terraform
- AWS CloudFormation
- Ansible
- Pulumi
- Azure Bicep
1. Terraform
Terraform is an IaC tool, used primarily by DevOps teams to automate various infrastructure tasks. The provisioning of cloud resources, for instance, is one of the main use cases of Terraform. It’s a cloud-agnostic, open-source provisioning tool written in the Go language and created by HashiCorp.
It allows you to describe your complete infrastructure in the form of code. Even if your servers come from different providers such as AWS or Azure, Terraform helps you build and manage these resources in parallel across providers.
2. AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation is a cloud service that takes care of the provisioning and configuring of your AWS resources after you create a template that outlines all the AWS resources you want, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances or Amazon Relational Database (RDS DB) instances. This tool determines what resources rely on what else, so you won’t have to manually generate and configure AWS resources one at a time.
It also makes cloud infrastructure management easy by allowing users to build, edit, and delete AWS resources in a regulated and predictable manner. Using this, you can manage your whole AWS environment by developing templates that specify the AWS settings you want to use.
The provisioning of new environments or updating existing ones may be accomplished with these templates’ help. CloudFormation is a simple method to manage the resources you have in your AWS account. It may help you save time and money by automating your infrastructure’s administration.
3. Ansible
Ansible is an open source, command-line IT automation software application written in Python. It can configure systems, deploy software, and orchestrate advanced workflows to support application deployment, system updates, and more.
Ansible’s main strengths are simplicity and ease of use. It also has a strong focus on security and reliability, featuring minimal moving parts. It uses OpenSSH for transport (with other transports and pull modes as alternatives), and uses a human-readable language that is designed for getting started quickly without a lot of training.
4. Pulumi
Pulumi is an open source Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) framework that provisions resources utilizing common programming languages. It also supports the major cloud providers such as AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Its leaning on common languages eliminates the time it would otherwise take to get used to a new domain-specific language like HCL.
Pulumi is an ecosystem of components that all work together. At a high level, the components include provider SDKs, CLI, and service backend. SDKs are installable packages your program consumes using the respective language’s package registry.
You probably work with them already. Pulumi supports the following programming and markup languages for writing infrastructure as code:
- TypeScript
- JavaScript
- Python
- Go
- .NET languages (C#, F#, and VB)
- Java
- YAML
This means you can use general-purpose code to create cloud resources such as variables, loops, functions, classes (well, at least in OOP), strong-type support, code reuse, and everything else you can do in those programming languages.
5. Azure Bicep
Azure Bicep is another powerful tool that simplifies the process of managing Azure resources through Infrastructure as Code. By offering a cleaner, more intuitive syntax and robust tooling support, Bicep makes it easier to create, maintain, and deploy your Azure infrastructure.
It aims to simplify the authoring experience, improve readability and maintainability, and provide better tooling support. It allows you to describe your Azure resources in a declarative manner – you specify what you want, and Bicep figures out how to achieve it.
Conclusion
Using an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) platform is important for today’s organizations to manage their infrastructure effectively. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables rapid deployments, ensures uniform and repeatable environments, promotes seamless team collaboration, strengthens security and compliance, and helps lower overall operational costs.
Adopting IaC and choosing the right automation tools allows organizations to gain improved agility, resilience, and scalability across their IT environments. Looking ahead, ongoing innovations in IaC platforms are set to further reshape DevOps automation, empowering businesses to handle the increasing demands of digital transformation (DX) with greater confidence, consistency, and operational efficiency.
