Introducing IaC

IaC is the process of managing and provisioning computing resources instead of physical hardware configuration. It is mostly associated with the cloud approach, in which you can request the necessary infrastructure in a programmable manner.

Managing computer infrastructure was always a hard, time-consuming, and error-prone activity. You had to manually place the hardware, connect the network, install the operating system, and take care of its updates. Together with the cloud, things became simple; all you had to do was to write a few commands or make a few clicks in the web UI. IaC goes one step further, as it allows you to specify in a declarative manner what infrastructure you need. To understand it better, let's take a look at the following diagram:

Figure 7.3 – IaC

You prepare a declarative description of your infrastructure, for example, that you need three servers, a Kubernetes cluster, and a load balancer. Then, you pass...