Infrastructure as Code

calendarJul 18, 2023 · 1 min read · infrastructure as code terraform  ·
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Yesterday I used the Infrastructure as Code, or IaC, tool Terraform to build Azure cloud infrastructure for the FlixTube video streaming microservices-based system. Terraform is an open source project written in Go that provides a mechanism to use HCL, or Hashicorp Configuration Language, to automate the process of building cloud infrastructure using the HCL human-friendly configuration language, or code.

I specifically used it in combination with its Azure plugin, to set up the entire infrastructure on Azure cloud. I built a resource group, container registry, and the k8s cluster, and connected the cluster to the registry to pull the video streaming microservice Docker image.

The benefits of using IaC rather than doing all that manually via the Azure Portal (UI), or via the Azure CLI (terminal), is that using Terraform makes the process repeatable, reliable, and automated. This will then enable adding it as a step in the Continuous Delivery pipeline. It also enables you to track the changes you make to the infrastructure the same way to track the changes in your application code. It's because it's code you will place in GitHub.

Three Terraform Commands

  1. terraform init
  2. terraform apply
  3. terraform destroy