Domain 1 of 8 · Chapter 2 of 3

Advantages of IaC Patterns

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Included in this chapter:

  • Version control and change review
  • Consistency and reduced configuration drift
  • Immutable infrastructure advantages
  • Exam-pattern recognition

Each IaC advantage across manual, mutable, and immutable approaches

IaC advantageManual provisioningMutable IaCImmutable IaC
Version control and reviewAd hoc, often undocumentedConfig in VCS: history, diff, plan reviewConfig in VCS: history, diff, plan review
Consistency and repeatabilitySnowflake servers, manual varianceRepeatable from one codified definitionIdentical replaced artifacts
Configuration driftAccumulates uncheckedReduced: plan reconciles to desired statePrevented: nothing modified in place
Upgrade methodManual in-place editsIn-place changes to live resourcesReplace with a new known-good artifact
Cheat sheet

Cheat sheet

  • Config is committed to version control
  • Reviewing a plan before apply
  • Declarative definitions reduce drift
  • Repeatable identical environments
  • Reuse and standardization via modules
  • Immutable infra: less complex upgrades
  • Immutable infra prevents drift
  • Mutable infrastructure changes in place

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References

  1. What is Terraform?
  2. Create immutable infrastructure (Well-Architected Framework) Well-Architected
  3. Use infrastructure as code (Well-Architected Framework) Well-Architected
  4. Modules (Terraform language)