How to create an IaC pipeline with cloud services?

There could be many reasons why microservices, containers, and serverless functions have been made the base of modern, cloud-native applications by developers. However, operational simplicity is, certainly, not of these reasons. The fragmentation of web-based systems or monolithic client-server into several cloud functions and microservices containers results in the increase of components that must be configured, deployed, updated, and monitored by the IT staff.

The three factors that have coerced this shift to such a big cluster of executables are mainly standardization, integration, and automation. Through standardization, the same code, template, or image can be reused by the developers countless times that too with little effort. As far as the integration is concerned, it allows the processes to extend across software development to resource deployment. You can process these integrated, standardized components through cloud operation pipelines and software development with the help of automation that in turn eliminates manual intervention and unplanned mistakes.

Such automated pipelines can be described by several labels and buzzwords that can be boiled down to three major categories. These three categories are:

Infrastructure as code (IaC):

Cloud resource configurations are transformed by IaC into editable code that is piled up into deployed services.

DevOps pipeline, or CI/CD pipeline:

DevOps pipeline or CI/CD pipeline defines the specific automation tools used for taking application code from a source code repository and moving it to a cloud function or deployable executable.

GitOps:

GitOps makes use of a Git source code management system for writing applications, building pipelines, provisioning & managing resources (mainly Kubernetes clusters), and deploying applications.

What DevOps or IaC pipeline is comprised of?

End-to-end automation is the result of DevOps. Irrespective of whether it is IaC or GitOps, seamless integration of IT operations and software development teams is required in an operational CI/CD pipeline. Many steps can be initiated by serverless functions in an event-driven pipeline. Here are the four most primary functions or categories:

A code repository for IaC code, microservices, applications, and serverless functions

A build & test cycle for piling up code into an IaC deployment & configuration steps, or executable, VM, or container image

Beta testing & artifacts staging is released for staging and testing compiled images, configurations, and code in a way that doesn’t affect the production infrastructure. It provides developers with an environment where they can rapidly and easily iterate for fixing bugs and rolling back the failed versions.

The artifacts that successfully pass the beta testing are released to production. Multiple release strategies should be supported by the pipeline such as the canary, blue/green, or rolling releases.

Though DevOps pipelines are usually commingled with application development, the four steps are also followed in the case of IaC pipelines. Always keep in mind that code is an active word in infrastructure as code. The objective is repeatable, reusable configurations that would need the IaC description to be managed by a code repository whether they are in Jinja, YAML, or a domain-specific language.

In the case of application software, IaC is about compiling, integrating, and testing pre-production environments or configurations. Similarly, events like successful completion of syntax checks or code check-in to the repository, or beta test suites can trigger respective steps in an IaC. The task is then performed automatically by the relevant tool.

How to create an IaC pipeline with cloud services?

There are several reasons why cloud environments go well with DevOps infrastructure-as-code pipelines. Some of the most primary of these reasons are:

The mutability and flexibility of virtual resources

The availability of various managed, serverless pipeline services that don’t need initial installation or client-operated infrastructure

APIs and integral automation features along with support for third-party automation tools through which execution and unattended triggers of pipeline steps are facilitated

Given below are the DevOps IaC tools by Azure:

Code, Artifact Repository

Azure Repos

Azure Artifacts

Azure Container Registry

Code/ Configuration Builder

Azure Pipelines

Release Workflows

Azure Pipelines

Azure Test Plans

Deployment Automation

Azure Automation

Azure Blueprints

ARM Templates

Trigger Functions

Azure Functions

Azure provides documentation and interfaces along with samples for integration with external CI/CD and IaC tools. Organizations can create modern IT environments through IaC. For instance, Terraform could be used for developing cloud-agnostic resource deployment scripts that can be applied to any of the cloud environments.

The Final Words

Since in the cloud the tools you require for an infrastructure-as-code pipeline are mostly available as serverless, they don’t require dedicated infrastructure. You can not only set them up quickly but also scale them to meet any requirement. Moreover, cloud-based tools also eliminate the complexity of interfacing and networking with multiple systems as they are tightly integrated with the application, database, and infrastructure services. As discussed above, managed IaC pipeline creation services are available and that you can outsource it from one of the reputed cloud migration service providers. Most cloud migration companies provide managed IaC pipeline creation services as well.

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