What Is Infrastructure as Code?

Key takeaways

Infrastructure as code (IaC) involves the management and provisioning of IT infrastructure using code instead of manual processes. Here are some important facts to know:

• In a 2025 Firefly report, 27 percent of cloud practitioners cited environment consistency and drift prevention as the number one benefit of adopting IaC [1].

• An IaC framework can help with multicloud deployments, disaster recovery, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) automation, and web application deployment.

• You can set up IaC for your DevOps process by specifying infrastructure requirements, implementing a version control system, choosing the right tools, and establishing a governance framework.

Learn more about the importance of IaC in DevOps processes, the fundamental principles guiding IaC deployment, and how to set up IaC for your infrastructure management. To learn more, enroll in the IBM DevOps and Software Engineering Professional Certificate. You’ll have the opportunity to develop expertise in DevOps topics and tools like Kubernetes for containerization and Chef for CI/CD automation in as little as six months.

What is infrastructure as code? 

Infrastructure as code (IaC) automates the management and provisioning of computing infrastructure, such as servers, virtual machines, operating systems, networks, and storage, using code instead of manual processes. By automating the manual process of setting up, configuring, and maintaining infrastructure every time you develop, test, and deploy an application, IaC allows you to reduce costs and human error.

IaC creates configuration files that contain your infrastructure specifications and uses them like source code to generate the same environment every time. In this way, you can easily manage and distribute your specified configurations, preventing undocumented changes.

IaC is an important part of DevOps as it facilitates automation of the CI/CD pipeline. By ensuring that development and operations teams use the same deployment and configuration template, IaC helps maintain consistency in IT environments, prevent configuration drift, and reliably scale your infrastructure based on demand. In fact, environment consistency and drift prevention are the most commonly cited benefits of IaC, with 27 percent of IT professionals in the State of Infrastructure-as-Code Report considering it the number one advantage of IaC in 2025 [1].

What is the difference between IaC and DevOps?

DevOps is a broad methodology that focuses on the accelerated delivery of applications by facilitating collaboration between development and operations teams, while IaC is a key DevOps practice that automates infrastructure provisioning and management. IaC is like an implementation tool in DevOps, which promotes DevOps objectives by enabling automation and rapid deployment.

How does IaC work?

The infrastructure-as-code process involves writing code to specify the desired state of infrastructure resources, such as servers, virtual machines, and networks. Organizations typically employ IaC tools or platforms like Terraform and AWS CloudFormation to understand and execute the code as well as interact with underlying APIs to create or modify the infrastructure components. You may follow these steps to set up your IaC strategy:

1. Infrastructure definition: The first step involves writing code that specifies which resources you need and their corresponding configurations. A developer typically uses a domain-specific language, such as YAML or JSON, to write these specification files.

2. Versioning: You’ll need to store this infrastructure code in a version control system or code repository, such as Git, so that you can track changes and revert to previous versions in case of issues.

3. Automated provisioning: Automation tools interpret the infrastructure code and execute it to provision the specified resources, like creating databases or setting up virtual machines. The tool compares the current infrastructure with the configurations specified in the code, identifies any discrepancies, and works to align the infrastructure with the defined specifications by creating, modifying, or deleting resources as necessary.

4. Deployment: Teams deploy the infrastructure across different environments by executing the same scripts, ensuring consistent infrastructure provisioning across all environments. Before deployment, you can test the infrastructure code in a virtual environment that mirrors the actual environment to verify compliance, identify errors, and more.

What are the key principles of infrastructure as code?

The main principles that guide IaC include a declarative versus imperative approach, idempotency, version control, automation, and consistency. Explore these in detail below.

Declarative vs. imperative approach

In a declarative approach, you describe the final state of the system, including the resources and properties required, and the IaC tool configures and provisions your infrastructure according to your specifications. In contrast, an imperative approach requires you to specify all the steps needed to achieve the desired infrastructure, and you must execute these steps in the correct order. While the declarative approach is generally preferred due to its ease of use, an imperative approach might be necessary for complex infrastructures where the order of events is important.

Version control

Similar to software source code, you’ll want to store your configuration files in a version control system like Git. Version control enables your teams to track changes, identify who made them, work on the same code simultaneously, and revert to a previous version if needed.

Idempotency

Idempotency means that the script produces the same result every time it’s executed. In IaC, idempotency ensures that applying the same configuration settings multiple times does not change the final state of the infrastructure, which maintains consistency, prevents drift, and enhances reliability.

Automation

By codifying infrastructure management, you eliminate the need to manually provision resources and apply configurations every time you deploy an application. Automating infrastructure management enables you to consistently generate environments, scale your operations, and expedite deployments. 

Read more: Task Automation: Get More Done in Less Time

Consistency

As IaC uses the same code for infrastructure provisioning in every stage of the DevOps life cycle, you can reduce environment-specific errors and easily replicate environments for disaster recovery or troubleshooting. 

Infrastructure as code security considerations

Implementing IaC comes with certain security considerations that you’ll need to account for. A misconfiguration in your code can expose sensitive information or create network vulnerabilities across environments. Additionally, if developers embed secrets, such as passkeys or access tokens, directly in the IaC template, these secrets will end up in the production environment and be visible to anyone with access. Moreover, excessive permissions and broad access in cloud environments can introduce vulnerabilities in the CI/CD pipeline. 

To mitigate these risks, IaC focuses on enforcing security considerations during the development phase itself, rather than after deployment. Consider the following ways you can ensure the security of your IaC resources:

• Implement strict access controls, strong permission boundaries, and distinct service accounts for each phase of the life cycle.

• Incorporate security scanning tools into your IaC pipeline to automate the identification of risks, compliance issues, and misconfigured resources before deployment.

• Use secrets management tools like AWS Secrets Manager to securely store and protect sensitive information. 

• Embed security policies as code using tools like AWS CloudFormation Guard, which will automatically scan and ensure your infrastructure aligns with your security requirements.

• Continuously monitor your IaC code to ensure compliance with security policies and quickly identify any misconfigurations.

Common IAC tools

You will find several tools available that serve different functions in the IaC pipeline:

• Configuration management: Ansible, Puppet, Chef

• Provisioning: Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Resource Manager

• Version control: GitHub, Perforce Helix Core

• Container management: Docker, Kubernetes

• Secrets management: AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault

• Compliance and monitoring: Splunk, Datadog

IaC examples

You can apply an IaC framework in several areas of your workflow, including the following:

• Web application deployment: Using IaC, you can specify and provision all the resources necessary for a web application as a reusable template, reducing errors and ensuring consistency throughout the development life cycle.

• CI/CD pipelines: With IaC, you can automate, version control, and test infrastructure changes like source code. IaC allows developers to test code in environments that mirror the actual production environment, resulting in faster and more reliable deployments.

• Disaster recovery: Since infrastructure configurations are stored in version control repositories, you can quickly and consistently reproduce environments and settings in case of a failure.

• Multicloud deployments: Infrastructure as code tools allow you to specify and manage resources consistently across different cloud platforms.

• Microservices: IaC helps maintain consistent settings and networks across microservices environments, where multiple teams work on different services that need to function optimally together.

Getting started with infrastructure as code

IaC can help reduce manual errors, maintain consistency across environments, and improve infrastructure management. The following steps outline how you can implement IaC for your team: 

• Define the configurations: Specify what configuration settings you require for your desired infrastructure. This will include selecting a domain-specific language, such as YAML or JSON, to write the script. Make sure you plan for the unique requirements of all your environments, from development to production.

• Adopt a version control strategy: Choose a version control platform, such as GitHub or Bitbucket, to store your configuration files and ensure easy tracking of changes.

• Choose an IaC tool: Use platforms like Ansible, Terraform, or AWS CloudFormation to automate the creation, provisioning, and management of your infrastructure resources. When selecting the right tool for your team, consider your existing cloud strategy, how the tool integrates into your workflow, and your team’s current skill level. 

• Establish a governance framework: Clearly define who has access to the files, set up well-defined approval processes, and plan for emergencies. 

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