Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools can be extremely valuable for organizations looking to streamline how their teams deploy infrastructure. Engineering teams embrace tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and Azure Resource Manager to reduce the time spent configuring their cloud infrastructure, thereby keeping their developers happier while also speeding up application release times.
However, scaling IaC usage across the organization can introduce new challenges that can ultimately delay deployments and increase security risks.
The Challenges of Scaling IaC Initiatives
In the rush to automate more processes, many DevOps teams push out code without controls in place to check for errors or inconsistencies. in 2020 found nearly 200K potential vulnerabilities in IaC templates, many of which were likely used multiple times.
These challenges grow more complex as the organization scales IaC usage. The ability to identify and fix errors in templates becomes untenable as the organization develops higher volumes of code and introduces other automation, orchestration, and configuration management tools. At the same time, governance standards become nearly impossible to implement.
The challenges of scaling IaC initiatives are exacerbated by a skills gap. Many organizations find that only a limited number of development engineers have the IaC skills to support these tools. This can lead to bottlenecks that delay deployments, extend release times, and introduce security risk as engineers take shortcuts to avoid potential delays.
How to Scale IaC on AWS
Aharon Twizer, Principal Partner Solutions Architect at AWS, joined Quali’s Pascal Joly and Roni Dover on a recent webinar to discuss how AWS customers approach these challenges and scale IaC with AWS CloudFormation.
Watch the recording to learn:
- How AWS customers use CloudFormation to make their teams more productive
- Examples of operational challenges that arise as IaC usage grows
- How Quali customers establish a “control plane” to scale IaC on AWS