Infrastructure as code (IaC), attempts to codify the underlying deployment infrastructure. There are 2 broad categories: continuous deployment, or continuous delivery. They are slightly different concepts with continuous deployment seamlessly integrating with the usual ‘infinity loops’ power-point diagrams that IT SI’s trot out. There is a complete automation of the devops process into deployment of the underlying environmental infrastructure and resources. Continuous delivery is not as seamless and involves a cycle of taking the latest application code and rolling out an architecture as idempotent or immutable deployments. Both models integrate with monitoring, reporting, and resource usage.
Most firms are interested in both sides of automation, devops and IaC. Some useful books which cover different technologies to build an IaC pipeline are below and include overviews of popular IaC technologies such as Chef, Puppet and Terraform.
Text on infrastructure as code, arranged in a series of practical issue resolution examples. With this book as a guide, readers will use various tools and platforms to perform important tasks, such as:
This book is available from Pakt Publishing in e-book format; ISBN: 9781786464910.
Independently published in 2019, Austin Young’s guide to IaC management explores immutable infrastructure and common misconceptions. The book also ventures through tools, approaches and management models. Readers can expect sections on how to provision and update servers, build new server templates and create reproducible objects.
This book is available in print and digital formats from many booksellers, some of which are listed in Google Books; ISBN 9781688449510.
This book by Bradley Campbell, DevOps architect at Plastiq, takes infrastructure as code into a more specialized territory to prepare readers to work on AWS cloud services — namely, AWS CloudFormation and the Cloud Development Kit. After an introduction to overarching IaC concepts, Campbell addresses surrounding Amazon tools and services that enable organizations to create composable infrastructure. Additionally, this book covers supporting and integrated tools, such as Troposphere, Sceptre, Terraform and Pulumi, for their respective roles in the AWS ecosystem.
This infrastructure as code book is available in both print and digital formats from Apress; ISBN: 9781484253977.
Dig into Terraform by HashiCorp — one of the most popular infrastructure as code tools in the space — with this book by Mikael Krief, DevOps engineer at Talentsoft. Readers will find example setup templates, called recipes, along with instructions on how to set up an architecture that spans multiple environments, including provisioning and configuration. This text also examines the Azure command-line interface and Terragrunt. With these tools, IT professionals can maintain DRY code — which stands for “don’t repeat yourself,” designed to reduce code repetition — to prepare to experiment and practice the key skills they’ll need to get started.
Find this IaC book in both print and digital formats from Pakt Publishing; ISBN: 9781800207554.
Another major player in the DevOps automation tool space is Chef, the focus of this infrastructure as code book. Author Jon Cowie, senior manager of customer architecture at Chef, walks readers through Chef’s native tools, resources, and services to dig into the technology’s inner workings. Complete with example code snippets and instructions to customize Chef, this intermediate- to advanced-level text builds on the reader’s existing knowledge of Chef and composable infrastructure.
This book is available from O’Reilly Media in both print and digital formats; ISBN 9781491949351.
Focuses on Puppet, a software configuration management tool. Written by James Loope, owner and director of research at Withywindle, Managing Infrastructure with Puppet dives into how to automate servers via various native and integrated tools and templates to work on Linux, Unix and Windows environments. This book also works with code examples and tangible use cases to teach readers how to execute configuration updates and manage access control.
Although this book is introductory-level for Puppet users, some knowledge of systems administration and Ruby code language basics is suggested to yield the most benefit. Readers can expect to learn about Puppet fundamentals and how to build and define configurations and frameworks, as well as how to use Puppet for auditing and accuracy checks.
This book is available from O’Reilly Media in paperback format; ISBN: 9781449307639.
