Approaches to Creating and Managing Infrastructure
Manual Approach: Involves directly creating and configuring infrastructure resources through cloud provider management consoles or command-line interfaces. This method provides granular control but can be time-consuming and prone to inconsistencies, especially in large or complex environments.
Automation Approach: Utilizes tools and frameworks to define and manage infrastructure through code, known as Infrastructure as Code (IaC). This approach ensures consistency, scalability, and efficiency by automating resource provisioning and management, reducing manual effort and minimizing errors.
Sample Example: Database Backup
I was assigned a task to take database backup every day at 7 PM and the backup had to be stored in Amazon S3 Storage with appropriate timestamp
- db-backup-06-01-2024.sql
- db-backup-06-02-2024.sql
Initially due to lack of time, I used to manually take DB backup at 10 PM and upload it to S3.
If a particular task needs to be accomplished in an repeatable manner, it MUST be automated.
Significant Details:
- Depending on the type of task, the tools for automation will change.
- There are wide variety of Tools & Technologies used for Automation like
Ansible, CloudFormation, Terraform, Python etc.
Example of a Single Service – Manual Approach
Creating Set of resources (Virtual Machine, Database, S3, AWS Users) Manually with identical configurations across development, staging, and production environments requires meticulous, repetitive configuration and can lead to inconsistencies and errors.
Example of a Single Service – Automated Way
Set of resources (Virtual Machine, Database, S3, AWS Users) Created using an automation approach with IaC Tools Ensures identical configurations across development, staging, and production environments reducing the human error and increasing efficiency.
