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Why Is Infrastructure As Code Important?
A short history lesson, with some examples of Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
System Administrators, IaC pre-history
Historically, installing and managing software systems on machines was a manual process, relegated to IT professionals deemed “System Administrators.” These folks would receive tickets to update software, or install software on machines, and then use whatever tools/scripts they had devised to perform the updates.
Sometimes these were widely shared scripts within an organization, other times they were hoarded by individuals.
Cloud Computing and the Need for IaC
With the advent of cloud computing, there were efforts on the part of cloud providers as well as their customers, to automate as many things as possible. It came almost out of necessity, as the amount of work required to maintain complex cloud-based systems magnified the amount of work traditionally put on the System Administrators’ plates.
Instead of using code to solve business needs, code was employed to solve software infrastructure needs (which, for companies like AWS, were the new business needs). The solution to this complexity problem was Infrastructure as Code (IaC). It’s the answer to the question: “how do I use code to…
