Chapter 1: Getting to Know IaC
In this chapter, we are going to discuss what Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is in detail. We will be discussing the benefits of using IaC. Furthermore, we will start describing the basics of Terraform, and then undertake a comparison of Terraform with other available IaC options, including AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager (ARM), and Google Cloud Deployment Manager. Moving on, we will then discuss Terraform architecture.
Throughout this chapter, we will be focusing on Terraform for major cloud providers, including GCP, AWS, and Azure. The whole chapter will help you in terms of achieving a fair understanding of Terraform (IaC) and how you can overcome the old lego system of executing manual changes to your environment. This will help you get an idea of how you can start using Terraform for infrastructure automation in your organization.
The following topics will be covered in this chapter:
- Introduction to IaC
- Advantages of IaC
- Introduction to Terraform
- A comparison with other IaC
- An understanding of Terraform architecture
