Why is Infrastructure-as-Code essential in the Cloud Age?

1. Why is Infrastructure-as-Code Essential in the
Cloud Age?
Andrew Ferrier
WW Architectural Lead
Regulated Cloud Practice, Cloud Expert Labs
© 2022 IBM Corporation

2. Context (Why are we talking about this?)
I work in IBM Cloud Expert Labs (specifically, on Regulated Cloud). We focus on being
experts in IBM Cloud.
Over the past 3-4 years, we have been doing a lot of work around automation, and
specifically using Terraform technology to deploy workloads to IBM Cloud especially.
Terraform, and automation more generally, is becoming a near-essential for cloud
projects. Let’s explore why…
© 2022 IBM Corporation 2
🤐

3. Recap: Why do folks use the cloud?
1. Reduced cost
2. “-as-a-Service” capability (this is really just cost anyway; you’re paying for
someone else to do the hard work)
3. Time-to-market
4. So they can draw on pools of infrastructure and capability (i.e. application
development and run flexibility)
- And this drives a need for automation
© 2022 IBM Corporation 3
☁️

4. So, what does problem does automation solve?
Non-automated infrastructure builds are waterfall, not agile:
1. You spend a lot of time ‘designing’ or ‘architecting’ the infrastructure
(making decisions) (💤)
2. Then someone builds that infrastructure. This takes a lot of time.
They are human, so they get some of it wrong (😬). Each time they
do it they get something different wrong (🤐).
3. Then some of it doesn’t work how you expected (it was complicated,
and you made some incorrect assumptions).
4. So you rework your design and start rebuilding.
5. But because you made some faulty assumptions early on, you throw
away a large part of your infrastructure and start again.
© 2022 IBM Corporation 4

5. So, what does automation do instead?
– All of the infrastructure your software needs is expressed as code.
– You can run, or re-run, this code at any time to bring your infrastructure in
line with your intentions.
– Building infrastructure directly is replaced with a development activity:
building automation.
– Any time you need to pivot, or make a change, you refactor or change
your code and re-run.
© 2022 IBM Corporation 5
🤐

6. So, can we give a slightly more concrete example?
Let’s look at Terraform:
• Terraform is a commonly-used technology for Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC)
• It’s managed by HashiCorp, but the core of it is open-source.
• It’s supported by most of the major cloud providers, including IBM Cloud
(this means they have a Terraform provider).
https://www.terraform.io/
© 2022 IBM Corporation 6

7. How does it work?
• Terraform is declarative.
• You specify the resources you want to be
built, and apply (aka run) your Terraform,
and Terraform creates them.
• For example, in IBM Cloud, resources might
include things like:
• A Virtual Private Cloud
• An entire managed RedHat OpenShift
cluster
• A software-as-a-service Watson Discovery
instance
© 2022 IBM Corporation 7

8. … there’s a bit more to it than that…
• You can plan your Terraform before you apply it so you can see
what changes it will make.
• Terraform is modular, so you can create your own groupings of
components and expose only properties that are relevant to you.
• You can destroy stuff as well as apply (create) it.
• Etc…
© 2022 IBM Corporation 8
🤐
🤐
🔥

9. So what benefits does this bring?
Repeatability, accuracy, and improved speed
• In a IaC model, it is still possible to make a mistake, but like
application code, it tends towards perfection; if you fix
something in your code, it stays fixed.
• Terraform understand dependencies, so when you reapply your
code, the computer does the hard work of doing things in the
right order
• This means you have more overall time to fix other issues,
enhance your infrastructure, and work on other stuff.
© 2022 IBM Corporation 9
☕

10. So what benefits does this bring?
Focus on the content, not the mechanics
• Creating infrastructure-as-code allows “infrastructure engineers” to focus
on what they are doing, and less on how.
• For example:
“are 3 or 6 servers the right answer for my load-balancing issue”
… rather than …
”I’ve forgotten which buttons I click to create or destroy the 3 additional servers.”
© 2022 IBM Corporation 10

11. So what benefits does this bring?
Trivial duplication
• Different environments (dev, test, production, etc.) are
minor variations of each other (or at least, they should be 😉
).
• IaC makes that easy; define input variables to express the
minor differences.
• Once you can stand up dev, you can stand up production
just as easily.
© 2022 IBM Corporation
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🐮
🐮

12. So what benefits does this bring?
Self-documenting
• You no longer need to write long tedious setup documentation
for your infrastructure/environments.
• Because infrastructure is expressed as code, the infrastructure is
partly self-documenting; to know how things are set up you just
need to inspect the code.
• (This is not 100%; with complex automation some documentation
may still be needed. But it’s a resource that doesn’t exist in a
non-IaC model)
© 2022 IBM Corporation 12
📄

13. So what benefits does this bring?
Only provision what you need and when
• On the cloud, you only pay for what you need and when, right? Sort of.
• This works OK for pure serverless, but for more traditional architectures (VMs,
containerization), provisioning a complex network of components is simply hard
work (meaning: 💰).
• We don’t tear down and stand up as much as we could do.
• Automation (combined with test automation, improved agile processes, etc.) saves
real $$$ here.
• We can manage environments themselves using code.
© 2022 IBM Corporation 13

14. So what downsides does it have? 😔
Skills
• In order to automate, you need automation skills as well as point-and-click button-
pressing skills.
• This is development.
• The good news? Terraform (at least) is easy. If this doesn’t scare you, you can (learn
to) write Terraform:
© 2022 IBM Corporation 14

15. So what downsides does it have? 😔
Delayed project cost benefits
• Automation can save a lot of time, but not upfront
• Upfront automation can be expensive, especially if your team doesn’t have
development skills
• The benefits accrue later and can be difficult to measure. Prepare to fight your
project manager!
• (But, these benefits are so huge than on large/complex projects you may find the
project too costly without automation).
© 2022 IBM Corporation 15
🤐

16. So what downsides does it have? 😔
Works best with other agile/modern development practices, like CI/CD/GitOps and
automated testing
• You’ll make the most of infrastructure automation if you automate other things too.
So:
• Your application(s) should be automatically built and deployed (CI/CD/GitOps).
• Your application(s) should be tested automatically.
© 2022 IBM Corporation 16

17. … quick aside … what’s Ansible?
• Ansible is another IaC technology which is often used as an alternative (or more
accurately) additionally to Terraform.
• Open-source, but steered by RedHat.
• It’s imperative, not declarative.
• Mostly suitable for server configuration in IaaS-heavy scenarios.
https://www.ansible.com/
© 2022 IBM Corporation 17

18. What can IBM Cloud do?
• IBM Cloud has built-in support for both Terraform and Ansible using a component
called IBM Cloud Schematics.
• Essentially, this provides tools to make it easier to use these technologies in a team:
• A GUI console environment for visibility
• + State-storing components
• (Also lots of IBM canned Terraform examples/starters for Regulated Cloud
architectures/etc.)
https://cloud.ibm.com/schematics
© 2022 IBM Corporation 18