Good afternoon, everyone! I hope you are all doing well today. Good afternoon! I hope you're doing well today.
I am excited to share today's presentation, which will focus on the benefits and challenges of using Infrastructure as Code, specifically with Terraform.
Please feel free to share your thoughts or ask questions throughout the presentation.
Let's dive in!
Let's talk about what Infrastructure as Code is.
In simple terms, it's a way of managing and provisioning infrastructure through machine-readable script or code, rather than through physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.
It allows us to define and manage our infrastructure in a declarative manner, making it more scalable, repeatable, and efficient.
So why do we need IAC? Why do we transfer from traditional, manual methods to IAC? To answer this question and better understand this shift, let’s think about how we used to traditionally manage computer infrastructure.
When we get a request for infrastructure with a specification, firstly we need to manually build the whole infrastructure, such as buying servers and installing operating systems. Then we need to manually configure the network, middlewares, and applications according to the specification. Finally, we need to test the function and ensure the function meets the requirements， so we can finally deliver it.
As we can see, the word that frequently appears in the right picture is "manually." Yes, every step needs manual intervention, which incurs high costs due to hiring and manual management.
It's highly inefficient, difficult to maintain, and easily take error due to lack of standardization。
When software development cycles are lengthy and the scale of infrastructure isn't large, it's not a problem and can be acceptable.
But with the rise of modern technologies like cloud computing or virtualization, development cycles have become incredibly fast. As a result, we need to come up with better techniques for infrastructure management. We could not wait for a few hours or even days anymore just to deploy a server.
So new techniques are coming up， and that's what we're discussing today. Let's refer to the benefits of IaC.
As we can see from the left picture， the developer just needs to write code that defines the infrastructure. Then we just need to simply send a command to the client of a tool， and it will bring up as many machines as we want and send another command later to bring them down as we need.
It enables us to create and set up infrastructure elements in just seconds, no matter if we do it once or a thousand times. It's very efficient.
As the name“infrastructure as code” implies, the code is the infrastructure. This means we can apply the code to different clouds, which makes it incredibly easy to replicate a new environment that precisely mirrors the one we currently have.
The whole apply process is handled by IaC tools, which minimizes the chances of errors.
In this part do you have any questions?
Let's take a closer look at Terraform.
Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code tool that allows users to define and provision infrastructure in a declarative manner.
There are also a lot of Infrastructure as Code tools as we can see in the right picture, but Terraform is known for its ease of use and multi-cloud support. It supports systems like AWS, Azure, Alibaba Cloud, Kubernetes and others.
"Now, let's see how Terraform works in action.
With Terraform, we can define infrastructure components in code, and then deploy and manage those components with a simple set of commands.
The provider will invoke the API or SDK provided by the cloud service provider.
The "plan" command is used for a preview of the resources defined in the template.
The "apply" command is used for the actual creation and modification of resources.
The "show" command is used for showing resources.
The "destroy" command is used for destroying resources.
While IaC and Terraform offer significant advantages, there are also a lot of challenges, such as a learning curve, potential errors, and the need for continuous updates to align with cloud provider changes.
In conclusion, Infrastructure as Code (IAC) brings numerous advantages to organizations, but it is not without its challenges. By acknowledging and proactively addressing common obstacles, teams can successfully navigate the complexity and leverage the full potential of IAC.
That's all, thanks for your attention.
Is there anything else that you want to ask?
