Why Use Infrastructure as Code?

As software moves to cloud based architecture, infrastructure has taken on a whole new meaning- we are no longer building servers to spec, but provisioning resources on the fly to meet changing needs.  The major cloud vendors have spent years streamlining their portals so they are easy to use- click a few times, and you’ve created a new Database.  Something isn’t working- click a few more times and you’ve changed the settings - now it works! This has enabled teams to deliver applications within reduced time frames- but it has also introduced a slew of new challenges. While not a problem for small Proof of Concept type efforts, West Loop Strategy believes that many of these challenges should be addressed head on as part of Cloud Engineering. These challenges include:

Environment Drift

Modern applications tend to have at least a Development and Production environment.  If users manually change settings on infrastructure in Development, those changes are frequently not replicated to Production in a consistent manner- and environment behavior diverges.

Deployment Failures

Deployments fail when they depend on cloud infrastructure that isn't provisioned, or is provisioned incorrectly.

Cost Overruns

Developers might increase the specs on infrastructure to test performance or a new feature- and they forget to dial it back down.  This leads to wasted spend.

Rollback Failures

In the event of a rollback, reverting cloud infrastructure to it's previous state is often overlooked- if it's even possible to do.

Infrastructure as Code is a core component of West Loop Strategy's Cloud Engineering practice- please contact us to learn more!