Understanding Infrastructure as Code and Configuration Management
This is Day 54 of #90daysoddevops challenge
Table of contents
- What's the difference?
- Task-01: Read more about IaC and Config. Management Tools
- Infrastructure as Code
- Configuration Management
- Task-02: Give differences on both with suitable examples
- Purpose
- Examples
- Workflow
- Task-03: What are most common IaC and Config management Tools?
- Infrastructure as Code Tools
- Configuration Management Tools
What's the difference?
When it comes to the cloud, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Configuration Management (CM) are inseparable. With IaC, a descriptive model is used for infrastructure management. To name a few examples of infrastructure: networks, virtual computers, and load balancers. Using an IaC model always results in the same setting.
Throughout the lifecycle of a product, Configuration Management (CM) ensures that the performance, functional and physical inputs, requirements, design, and operations of that product remain consistent.
Task-01: Read more about IaC and Config. Management Tools
Infrastructure as Code
Infrastructure as code refers to managing and provisioning infrastructure using code. With IaC tools, you write code that defines your infrastructure and its components. Then the IaC tool provisions and manages that infrastructure automatically based on your code.
Some benefits of IaC are:
Reproducibility: You can recreate your infrastructure from code whenever needed.
Version control: You can track changes to your infrastructure code over time.
Automation: IaC tools automate the provisioning and management of infrastructure.
Popular IaC tools include:
Terraform
CloudFormation
Pulumi
The main focus of IaC tools is to provision infrastructure resources like compute, storage, and networking.
Configuration Management
Configuration management tools focus on configuring provisioned infrastructure to a desired state. They install software, configure settings, deploy applications, and more.
Some benefits of configuration management are:
Standardization: You can ensure all servers are configured the same way.
Automation: Tasks like installing updates and packages are automated.
Auditing: You have visibility into configuration changes.
Popular configuration management tools include:
Ansible
Chef
Puppet
The main focus of config management tools is to configure existing infrastructure resources like virtual machines and servers.
While IaC tools provision infrastructure, config management tools ensure that infrastructure is configured correctly. The two approaches work together in the DevOps toolchain. IaC tools provision the basic infrastructure, which is then configured using config management tools.
Task-02: Give differences on both with suitable examples
Infrastructure as code (IaC) and configuration management (config mgmt) tools have some key differences:
Purpose
IaC tools are used to automate the provisioning of infrastructure resources like VMs, containers, networks, etc. They focus on creation and deployment.
Config mgmt tools are used to configure and manage existing infrastructure. They focus on ensuring servers, applications and configurations are in the desired state.
Examples
IaC tools: Terraform, CloudFormation, Pulumi
Config mgmt tools: Ansible, Chef, Puppet
Workflow
With IaC tools, you define your infrastructure in code and the tool provisions the actual resources.
With config mgmt tools, you define configuration and application deployment policies in code and the tool configures existing resources to match that definition.
In summary, the key difference is:
IaC tools focus on creation and deployment of infrastructure
Config mgmt tools focus on configuration and management of existing infrastructure
They work together in the DevOps toolchain:
IaC tools are used to provision the basic infrastructure
Config mgmt tools are then used to configure that infrastructure and deploy applications
Task-03: What are most common IaC and Config management Tools?
There are many popular tools for both Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Configuration Management (CM). Here are some of the most commonly used ones:
Infrastructure as Code Tools
Terraform
Terraform is one of the most popular IaC tools. It uses a declarative configuration file to define and manage infrastructure resources. It supports various cloud providers like AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.
AWS CloudFormation
CloudFormation is Amazon's proprietary IaC tool. It allows you to define and provision AWS resources in a template file.
Azure Resource Manager
This is Microsoft's IaC tool for automating Azure infrastructure.
Google Cloud Deployment Manager
This is Google's IaC tool for automating GCP infrastructure.
Pulumi
Pulumi is a modern IaC tool that uses regular programming languages like JavaScript, Python, Go, etc.
Configuration Management Tools
Ansible
Ansible is an agentless configuration management tool. It uses simple YAML files called playbooks.
Chef
Chef is a configuration management tool that uses Chef Recipes.
Puppet
Puppet uses Puppet Manifests as its configuration language.
SaltStack
SaltStack is another popular configuration management tool. It takes an "infrastructure as data" approach.
In summary, the most popular IaC tools are Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager and Google Cloud Deployment Manager. While Ansible, Chef, Puppet and SaltStack are among the most widely used configuration management tools. Both IaC and CM tools are important components of modern DevOps workflows.
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