IT systems become not just a part of business, they are the business. Companies tired of "it works on my machine", "oops I did it again" and 3-zero bills for server provisioning are adopting IaC. It helps them to solve these problems easily and start a new era of digitalization.
Infrastructure as Code literally becomes an initial enabler of DevOps methodology because without it you can't implement agile practices like continuous integration and continuous deployment.
10
Years of experience in IT
30%
Shorter time-to-market delivery
< 5%
average failure rate achieved
About IaC thinking
Infrastructure as Code benefits
Despite the fact, IaC serves as a DevOps enabler, it has other significant advantages for dev teams:
Faster changes and modernization delivery
The IT infrastructure is no more the constraints in your development processes. Almost all repeatable manual tasks are automated!
Calculable KPIs
You can calculate the income and measure the results after having IaC adopted.
Smart time management
Other users can define and manage the resources, without involving the IT department. In this case, IT staff spends their time on more efficient tasks at the production and improvement levels.
One-size-fits-all solution
Infrastructure as code can be applied to any system running on a cloud, virtualized systems, or even directly on physical hardware.
Infrastructure close to ideal
You describe the desired state of the infrastructure by means of templates which maintain this desired state.
Version control
Infrastructure described with a code is transparent for all users. You can track changes and see who and when made changes. Besides, you will be able to swiftly unroll if an action was undesired.
Our Infrastructure as Code expertise
We provide end-to-end solutions of any complexity.
Infrastructure as code design from scratch
- Tooling definition and selection
- Infrastructure automation strategy design and roadmapping
- End-to-end implementation
- Maintenance and optimization
Infrastructure as code implementation service
- Current infrastructure evaluation, elimination of bottleneck
- Preparation of the infrastructure for automation
- Tech stack selection
- Infrastructure as code implementation
- Maintenance and optimization
IT infrastructure audit
- Audit of current infrastructure health
- Recommendations on enhancement and elimination of bottlenecks
- Ongoing consulting and control of the optimization execution
Infrastructure as code consulting
- Tech stack consulting
- Disaster recovery
- Best Practices adoption
- Professional advise on current infrastructure optimization
Infrastructure automation solutions
We select among others the best solution to meet your business goals
Why choose ALPACKED as your infrastructure as code service provider
Quality
Any task completed by our DevOps engineer will pass internal quality control before delivery. That's the rule we never break!
Support 24/7
Our DevOps managers are always ready to answer your questions. You can call us on the weekends and at night. Because we are time zone and culturally aligned.
Experience
ALPACKED - DevOps company that has more than 10 years of IT experience. Certified in many technologies & methodologies.
Great rates
We have special prices for our loyal customers and startups.
Let's arrange a free consultation
Just fill the form below and we will contaсt you via email to arrange a free call to discuss your project and estimates.
Getting started with Infrastructure as Code
IaC is a big challenge for the companies and organizations setting up agile and DevOps methodologies. To start with Infrastructure as code, you should learn key tenets.
A good admin is a lazy admin
We all know necessity is the mother of invention. It is very important for IT businesses to keep pace with ever changing world and improve products regularly. That's why developers are constantly trying to automate routines to focus on more creative tasks.
What is infrastructure as code (IaC)?
Infrastructure as code (IaC) is an approach of provisioning IT infrastructure combining automation with template creation. In the case with IaC, configurations are managed through machine-readable definition files which generate service components. In other words, it is a process of provisioning and management of cloud and server resources by writing a template file that is both human readable and machine consumable.
IaC is all about
- Building the infrastructure for applications all at once through automation;
- Source control;
- Flexible build process.
Having Infrastructure as code adopted, you eliminate almost all errors caused by manual manipulations, shorten time-to-market delivery, gain flexibility and self-documented code.
Infrastructure as code implementation.
Despite every business case is unique, we follow 4 key stages of IaC adoption. Here is a short synopsis:
Discovery
Discover current infrastructure, all ins and outs, documentation and processes
Translation
Take the results of the discovery and "translate" them into the language of IaC. Change processes if needed to align with IaC standards and best practices
Workflow
Change the workflow of the Ops team to reflect the changes. Implement Code reviews, CI/CD and proper management
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Release
Once translation is done and the new workflow has been adopted by the team, release IaC and start getting benefits of the new approach
Where does Infrastructure as Code fit best?
Infrastructure automation has come into its own with cloud, because it's difficult to manage servers in the cloud well without it. But the principles and practices of infrastructure as code can be applied to infrastructure whether it runs on cloud, virtualized systems, or even directly on physical hardware.
The services we offer within infrastructure as code solutions:
Alpacked provides end-to-end solutions - from consulting to implementation and further maintenance.
- Evaluation of readiness and infrastructure health, existing technology stack, identifying opportunities for improvements and agility.
- Offering of tools / blueprints and definition of the target state of the end-to-end development lifecycle.
- Design and implementation of IaC framework that automates build and deployment processes.
- Integration and configuration of existing tools and services.
- Delivery of documentation and supporting materials.
Contact us for complementary 1-h consultation if you are interested in infrastructure automation design of the processes, and tools that deliver Infrastructure as code.
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Infrastructure as code FAQ
Have other questions? Email us!
sales@alpacked.io
Why is infrastructure as code important for DevOps?
Infrastructure automation becomes literally an enabler of DevOps methodology. It helps companies in so many aspects like:
- eliminate the human-caused errors
- decrease the number of repeatable manual tasks
- create a detailed documentation with description of the desired state of the infrastructure
- track changes made in the infrastructure and rollback with one click, if the action was undesired
- and the last but not the least, IaC directly influence the time-to-market delivery. Since the IT staff is focused on product improvement rather than on its maintenance and fix of bugs caused by human intervention, the deployment frequency goes through the roof.
Why is infrastructure as code so important for startups?
Startups depend on the deployment speed like none other. That's why infrastructure automation results in full concentration on the application optimization and new features release.
Nota bene:
Despite the evident benefits of the IaC approach, don't rush to automate everything from the early beginning if you haven't done it from scratch. Infrastructure as code implementation requires much time and efforts, especially if the current infrastructure would need refactoring before. Once your application / platform will be stable, give or take, you will be able to define what requires immediate automation and what can wait a little bit.
What's your expertise in infrastructure automation?
Our DevOps engineers have a wealth of experience in infrastructure automation. Since 2017, Alpacked helped numerous of organizations to implement automation and rebuild the infrastructure in a modern manner. We provide a comprehensive infrastructure design & support services across cloud environments (AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, DigitalOcean), VMs, and on-prem. Using the best DevOps practices, we help you transform the IT capabilities faster and more efficient.
Moreover, our engineers are officially certified in Ansible and Terraform, so they have a deep expertise in working with these two most popular technologies for infrastructure as code implementation.
Which tools do you recommend to use?
There are plenty IaC tools on your choice but we distinguish our TOP tools we advise to use:
- Ansible
- Terraform
- Pulumi
- AWS CDK
- CloudFormation
- SaltStack
Which is better - Ansible or Terraform?
These instruments are different. In simple words Terraform is responsible for creating the infrastructure itself , and Ansible is responsible for provisioning everything inside the infrastructure. So if you want to create for example infrastructure for simple application with backend, frontend and data layer - ideally you would use terraform to create the instances/virtual machines frontend and backend, spin up some database inside cloud, and then you use Ansible to place your code into the proper instances and configure it correctly. For sure real-world cases are more complex, but it's easy to understand the main difference. And yes, you can use Ansible to provision infrastructure on AWS, but we suggest you not to do so, we tried this and it gives lots of unneeded overhead.
Is Pulumi a great tool for infrastructure as code?
This is very promising instrument and here is why - it allows you to write the actual CODE, not the YAML/JSON manifests, which gives you many capabilities of the programming languages like if/else conditions, loops and so on. In addition to this - in most of the cases Pulumi relies on terraform libraries when working with cloud providers, which gives you the ability to use everything you like in terraform, and fix with the programming language everything you don't like in terraform