What is infrastructure-as-code (IaC)?

Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) is an efficient approach to provisioning and managing infrastructure through code-based automation, instead of through manual processes. The idea is that manual infrastructure management is slower and prone to human error — while running the risk of introducing inconsistencies between environments. IaC practices include validation throughout the coding process to catch errors and misconfigurations before they're pushed live. 

IaC aims to streamline common workflows by creating a simple and reproducible deployment template that teams can rapidly use wherever they need it. Otherwise, teams would have to manage a tangled web of infrastructure components, including the following: 

• Databases

• OSes and other software

• Cloud storage solutions

• Load balancers

• Virtual machines (VMs)

• Servers

• Routers and switches

• Networks and firewalls

Configuration management tools have been around for decades. However, IaC found its footing as a formal concept in the mid-2000s with the Puppet platform. Other platforms such as Ansible, Pulumi, and Terraform have since launched to deliver new, modernized IaC capabilities to organizations of all sizes. Each of these — as with any solution — offers its own approach to IaC while delivering varied programming language support. There isn't a single tool that supports every IaC use case out there. Each team's exposure to IaC operations and preferences should help drive adoption.

How does infrastructure-as-code (IaC) work?

Infrastructure-as-code setups primarily use files to manage configurations and other operational code. These ready-made templates are easy to deploy, easy to replicate, and enable a wide range of conditional automations to streamline infrastructure management tasks. Commonly written in a language such as YAML, JSON, or XML, IaC files should be declarative according to best practices. 

Declarative in this context means the file contains instructions stating how the environment should be configured. As such, these files also contain definitions of key infrastructure components to make everything easier to parse. However, an IaC file doesn't always contain the raw configuration needed to spin up a deployment. It instead can function as a series of guidelines — laying out computing specifications, OS and software requirements, and more.

When infrastructure scales up and gets more complicated, a more explicit approach is necessary. Teams may instead create imperative templates that outline the exact steps needed to provision a new environment. This approach is more precise and crucial when events absolutely must happen in a specific sequence. 

Plus, infrastructure-as-code practices often emphasize provisioning new infrastructure components as needed to keep systems current. Instead of updating configurations again and again to accommodate aging servers, teams can prepare fresh backends that don't deviate too far from their original configurations. This configuration drift is difficult to manage over time. Drift also makes it tougher to apply automations reliably and consistently.

IaC and DevOps

DevOps and IaC also go hand-in-hand. Continuous integration and continuous delivery/deployment (CI/CD) relies heavily on automation at every stage of the software development lifecycle — boosting efficiency while employing programmatic approaches to development. Not only are IaC configuration templates replicable, but they're deployable via scripting. 

Infrastructure code can also share the same development pipeline, so teams won't have to reinvent their deployment patterns or management. However, IaC approaches do make it easier to provision specialized application environments if you'll likely need them later — including those for development, testing, and production.

What are the benefits of infrastructure-as-code (IaC)?

IaC offers many advantages to organizations and individual IT teams, including the following: 

• Easy integration with DevOps strategies for software development and infrastructure deployment

• Reduced configuration errors and inconsistencies across environments

• Streamlined cross-system deployments anywhere using the same IaC files

• Version control for easier rollbacks, in the event of issues or expected failures

• Time savings via automation

• Cost savings through greater efficiency and (often) tooling consolidation

• Easier addition of new computing or backend resources to support scalability

• Improved reliability and testing

However, IaC approaches aren't perfect. For one, they require buy-in and come with an initial learning curve, which can discourage code-first development. Debugging also is tougher for teams with limited IaC experience. Automations can be tricky to implement correctly, and a free-hand IaC strategy without planning can promote fragmentation. IaC can also make secure IAM enforcement more challenging, since it's possible for teams to hard-code secrets or other credentials within the configuration template itself. 

Maintaining a strong and secure IaC posture thus requires continuing education and reinforcement of best practices to prevent new infrastructure challenges from emerging.

Does HAProxy support infrastructure-as-code (IaC)?

Yes! HAProxy One — the world's fastest application delivery and security platform — supports many configuration-based automations through HAProxy Fusion Control Plane. Teams can install HAProxy Fusion inside Kubernetes or using Terraform, allowing dynamic scalability and provisioning of HAProxy Enterprise nodes via API depending on load. It can also discover backends from Kubernetes, AWS, Consul, or Consul Enterprise to enable end-to-end IaC across the load balancing stack.

Learn how Liftoff uses Terraform, Ansible, and GitHub Actions to automate HAProxy at scale, cutting costs by 87% and reducing latency by 75%. Alternatively, we encourage you to request a demo of HAProxy One to see how it enables your IaC workflows.