Infrastructure as Code
Declarative infrastructure, drift, state files and rebuild-from-empty.
4 to work through
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intermediate
A platform manages infrastructure with code, but engineers make emergency console changes during incidents that are never reflected back. What problems does this drift cause, and how should it be handled without blocking incident response?
2 min answer -
intermediate
During an incident an engineer makes a manual change in the cloud console. It resolves the issue. What should happen next and what should have prevented it?
2 min answer -
intermediate
Half your production changes are made through the console during incidents. The IaC repository no longer matches reality. What do you do?
2 min answer -
intermediate
Infrastructure is defined as code, but production has drifted from the definitions through manual incident fixes. How should drift be handled, and what is wrong with simply enforcing the code?
2 min answer
3 terms in this topic
Drift Reconciliation
Treating divergence between declared and actual infrastructure as an expected condition with an owned resolution path, rather than as a violation to …
practiceInfrastructure as Code in Practice
Defining infrastructure declaratively in version-controlled code so environments are reproducible, reviewable and auditable.
conceptTerraform State
The file mapping declared resources to real infrastructure, without which the tool cannot tell what it already created — and which becomes critical i…
Neighbouring topics
Cloud Architecture
General material on designing for cloud platforms.
Compute Models
Instances, containers and functions, and what each is priced and shaped for.
Cloud Storage
Object, block and file storage, and the access patterns each suits.
Cloud Databases
Managed relational, key-value, document and analytical services.
Containers
Images, registries, immutability and the deployment model they enable.
Kubernetes
The reconciliation loop, and whether the workload needs what it provides.
Serverless
Scale to zero, per-request billing, cold starts and connection limits.
Autoscaling
Signals, delays and bounds — and the maximum that caps a runaway bill.
Load Balancing
Distributing traffic, health checking, and removing failures from rotation.
Multi-Region Architecture
Surviving a region, and the data consistency price of doing so.
Availability Zones
The unit of correlated physical failure, and what zones do not protect against.
Disaster Recovery
Backup-restore, pilot light, warm standby and active-active postures.
Backup Strategies
Scope, immutability, separation, and the restore drill that makes it real.
Landing Zones
A governed foundation of accounts, network, identity and guardrails.
Managed Services
Which operational responsibilities actually transfer, and which do not.
Cloud Migration
Per-application disposition, sequencing and the capability change underneath.
Multi-Cloud
Best-of-breed, portfolio and portable — three very different costs.
Edge Computing
Moving compute towards the user, and what cannot follow it.
Cloud Governance
Preventive policy, tagging, quotas and cost and security guardrails.