IaC Toolbox: Best Tools and Techniques

For an introduction to infrastructure as code, we recommend reading the first part of our blog series.

When dealing with modern IT infrastructure, cloud, DevOps, and infrastructure as code, it can be confusing to distinguish between the various tools and use cases such as Terraform and Pulumi, as well as configuration management tools such as Ansible, Chef, or Puppet. Therefore, it is important to understand the difference between infrastructure as code, infrastructure provisioning, and configuration management.

Basics

First, some conceptual basics from an infrastructure point of view:

IT infrastructure consists of a combination of hardware and software components. (Server, storage, network, firewall devices, routers, etc.).

Provisioning is the process of creating infrastructure and making it available to end users.

Configuration is the process of assembling and setting up the provisioned IT infrastructure resources. For example, installing and configuring a database on a server or configuring a firewall device.

Automation refers to the process of implementing recurring tasks, processes or procedures. For example, the installation of Nginx on a server automated by code.

Orchestration is the process of coordinating multiple automations. The output of one automation can be used as input to another automation. For example, to provision a server, you need a network. So one automation will provision network resources and another will use its output to provision servers.

With the advent of cloud computing, infrastructure provisioning has become easy because most complex configurations are abstracted by cloud providers using virtualisation and software-defined networking. You can provision networks, servers and storage in minutes using APIs. All cloud providers provide APIs so you can use programming languages to manage your IT infrastructure and configure provisioned resources using code.

Using code to provision and configure infrastructure is called Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC). In simple terms, this is coding infrastructure provisioning and configuration.

Provisioning vs. Configuration

The table below provides an overview of the most popular deployment tools such as Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CDK, AWS CloudFormation, Microsoft ARM, Microsoft Bicep and Google Cloud Deployment Manager. These tools support infrastructure automation for a variety of cloud environments, including AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.

From declarative languages to the use of familiar programming languages, these tools offer a wide range of features and flexibility for building and managing infrastructure. Whether you have a multi-cloud strategy or are specific to one cloud provider, there is a tool to suit your needs.

In addition to the tools shown in the table, it is important to note that there are a variety of other tools that can be counted as infrastructure-as-code. In this article, we will focus mainly on Infrastructure-as-Code tools that are designed to provide infrastructure resources. However, it is also important to understand the distinction between these tools and other types of infrastructure management tools. In addition to provisioning tools, there are also configuration management tools that focus on configuring and managing software components within the infrastructure.

Configuration management tools such as Ansible, Chef, Puppet or Salt provide mechanisms for automating the installation, configuration and updating of software on infrastructure resources. They play a critical role in managing the configuration and state of software on deployed resources.

It is important to note that both types of tools are often used in combination to provide comprehensive infrastructure automation and management. While configuration management tools focus on the software layer, infrastructure-as-code provisioning tools enable automation and management of the underlying infrastructure that runs the software.

Overview of infrastructure-as-code tools for AWS, Azure, and GC

The chart provides an overview of the most common infrastructure-as-code tools for deployment on the three major public cloud platforms and their programming languages. See the table for more details on each tool.

There are many popular and widely used infrastructure-as-code tools that developers and DevOps teams use to build and manage their infrastructure in an automated way. Choosing the best tool depends on specific requirements, target systems and team preferences. Here are some of the most important and widely used tools: