🌍 What Is Infrastructure as Code (IaC)?
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) means managing and provisioning infrastructure through code rather than through manual setup via a UI.
Instead of clicking in a cloud console to:
Create EC2 instances
Configure networks
Set firewall rules
Attach storage
Set IAM policies
…you write code that defines all of it.
That code can:
✅ Be version-controlled
✅ Be reused
✅ Be reviewed
✅ Be automated
✅ Be audited
In short → Your infrastructure becomes software.
🧰 Tools for Infrastructure as Code
There are many IaC tools available, but they fall into two main categories:
Universal (Multi-Cloud)
Terraform
Pulumi
These work across multiple cloud providers.
Vendor-Specific
AWS: CloudFormation, CDK, SAM
Azure: ARM Templates, Bicep
GCP: Deployment Manager
Terraform stands out because it is:
✅ Open-source
✅ Cloud-agnostic
✅ Mature
✅ Widely adopted in the industry
⚠️ Problems With Manual Provisioning
🕐 Time Waste
A single environment can take hours.
👨💻 High Cost
More manual work = more engineers = more spending.
🐞 Human Errors
Missed security configs, wrong instance types, incorrect networking.
🔐 Security Gaps
Manual setups make it easier to forget:
Encryption
IAM rules
Proper firewall settings
❓ Inconsistency
Different teams = different setups =
“It works on my machine” syndrome.
🖥️ Tooling Setup (From Today’s Lesson)
Terraform installed
Version verified
Alias created (tf)
Autocompletion enabled
VS Code extension installed
Next lessons will go deep into:
Providers
State files
Variables
Modules
Deploying real AWS infrastructure
⚙️ How Terraform Works (High-Level)
DevOps engineer writes .tf files using HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language).
The code is stored in GitHub.
Terraform communicates with cloud APIs through providers.
CLI commands control the lifecycle:
terraform init # Initialize project
terraform validate # Validate syntax
terraform plan # Show what will change
terraform apply # Create / update infra
terraform destroy # Delete infra
Terraform doesn’t “magically create servers” —
It calls cloud APIs exactly like the console or CLI does — but programmatically.
🧠 Key Lessons From Day 1
🔹 Terraform exists to eliminate manual work
🔹 Infrastructure should be code
🔹 Automation enables reliability
🔹 Git should track infra too
🔹 CI/CD is incomplete without IaC
🔹 DevOps without Terraform is slow DevOps
✍️ Follow My Terraform Journey
I’ll be sharing daily blogs as I progress from Day 1 to Day 30
Stay tuned for:
Real examples
Code walkthroughs
Debugging lessons
AWS + Terraform projects
Follow along if you’re learning Terraform too 🚀
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