The process of manually monitoring an operation is outdated. And this statement putting forth the fact is also outdated. This old is the process of manual operations. The concept of automation has carved its position deep in every possible way when IT is considered.
Code – The DevOps way!
Coding is the process of writing a programming language to make a system perform an operation. This is written in the language in which the system understands and has multiple variations in it. Making a system perform certain tasks, making it repeat in looping categories for frequently occurring or required possibility or creating conditions to perform else iteration and all these are what the code helps us with.
Once after the code is written and is out for working in the production environment, there comes the real part. The written code must be executed successfully. Monitoring the procedure of how the code (mentioned as an application here) works was either done manually or with other additional software tools. The latest technologies in IT have made it possible to integrate the automation into the code. Well, we are not talking about the code automation here but about the Infrastructure as a code.
The code is written in such a manner paving the way to DevOps. Be it any programming language, it holds the code which makes the process of monitoring manual. The entire code is scripted with algorithms to automate the process. This is done by writing your code in a configuration management tools ie; the Infrastructure as a Code (IaC) tools available in the market. When coders or the developers script their code using these tools, they get the options to bring in the automated monitoring condition into their codes. This code driven life cycle of a particular application makes it a lot easier for business to use these applications.
Servers running multiple applications in the IT infrastructure are crucial for business continuity. Imagine these system being crashed. The setting up of the servers and its configuration again though you have the option to get back your data is really tedious. Reconfiguration of these servers to its original state prior to the crash is what it all means and is what that has to happen. Accomplishing all these tasks manually is, of course, possible but imagine the time taken. Well, not yours but for the business to be back on its track with data residing on these applications.
This is where the Infrastructure as the code comes into role play. Provisioning of the infrastructure along with its deployment is what the IaC does.
Taking a simple SQL server installation example.
While installing an SQL server, manual operations can be completely removed. Checking the installation, setting the password, creating the required database, removing or deleting the unnecessary database and monitoring its working, managing the dump, everything is done automatically irrespective of the number of times you want the process to run and this can happen by writing the codes in the IaC tools.
The descriptive programming languages used to write these codes are easy to learn and now the deployment and provisioning of the servers can be done by the developers itself by integrating the process in their codes and it is not anymore only the area of IT Administrators.
Confidence in the ongoing operation of scale leading to business agility is the best thing an IT person can ever feel. These descriptive languages not only work with the onsite production but also on the cloud. The process can be leveraged based on requirements.
With that being said about the IaC, there were a lot of debates on whether the containers from Docker will take over the IaC.
Containerization implemented resources utilization in the virtual environment. It mostly focuses on application deployment using templates of resources and skips the machine configuration, whereas the IaC is more target oriented pointing over the machine configuration. Well, multiple experts concluded that both IaC and the Containers will work together to deliver better performance.
Conclusion:
IaC has been making the work easy in multiple ways for the IT Administrators by completely automating the administrative workload. Its multiple approaches of Declarative programming methods and Imperative programming methods makes it more flexible. It is configured as a template and used as the resource, and all these are performed using the IaC tools available.
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