Infrastructure is typically defined as the as the necessarily hardware, and software required for an application to run smoothly and at optimal performance. This hardware typically consists of any Servers, Data Centers, Personal Computers, Devices, Routers, and switches. These hardware tools are used to process and analyze data, store data, and enable communication. The software includes, software applications, Operating Systems that enable communication between users and the computer hardware, and Virtal Machines that act as seperate instances running on top of our regular operating system.

Difference between on prem vs the cloud

On Prem refers to physical data centers and infrastructure that is privately owned and controled. This infrasctructure can be used to run private clouds. By contrast, Cloud computing through a cloud server, provides on-demand scalable access to computer services and resources, such as applications, servers, storage, analytics, and networking, which are managed by affermentioned cloud provider.

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you're not part of the steamroller, you're part of the road.

- Stewart Brand

What is Infrastructure as Code ?

Infrastructure as Cide (IaC) is the creation and managing of infrasctructure, with code, rather than manual means. Infeastructure as code allows for the rapid deployment of resources, that results in quicker applciation deployment and slower employee dowtime because developers,or anyone working on the source code for the application can easily create new resources to create and run code in, rather than waiting on manually waiting on an engineer to manually create the infrastrucutre. Version Control is a crucial factor in all code creation but specefically, in the creation of infrastrucutre becasue the wrong changes in the enviornment may cause an application to not work properly or at all. With that being said it is best practice to keep the infrasctructure code in a remote repository that is under source control.

What do IaC tools Do? And which is the best?

IaC tools are used to provison deploy, configure, and orchestrate infrastructure in a cloud enviornemnt. Some tools are used to create the acutal infrastrucutre, while others may be used to specefically manage the enviorenmnt of the applications. My Personal favorite Tool is Terraform by HashiCorp. Terraform is an open-source project that can be used on any cloud provider including AWS, Azure, GCP. Terraform ensures consistency and reliabilty, be ensuring the same code is stored and is consistent across any and all cloud providers and repositories. Also, the CLI allwos for the validation, and the planning phase in which you can double and triple check that all setting are configured to desired results.

Why is IaC needed to fully optimize business performance?

DevOps techniques of auotmation is the only way to rapidly deploy infrastructure and resources, this rapid deployment leads to peak utilization of resources, and allows for quicker identifacation of bugs or error's in code. CI/CD refers to the continuous intergration, and continuous delivery of applications, these are key concepts to a devOps engineer which allows for the autiomation of takss. CI/CD also relies on continous monitoring of the applications, and different flagging tools that you can use to easily identify and find root of any potential errors. IaC allows for the seamless integration of both the developer, and operations team since both teams will be using the same infrastrcuture, their wont be any miscommunication with the desired enviornemnt of the developers, and the desrires of the operation team.

Benefits Of IaC?

Okay we have now discussed what infrastrucutre is, and how IaC can be used in order to easily automate this enviornemnt. So now is time to discuss the benefits of IaC and how it can help a busienss reach peak optimization.