Exploring Infrastructure as Code
Are you looking to start using Infrastructure as Code (IaC), but feel a little bit lost? Sure, being able to get away from repetitive, manual tasks when setting up your environments looks awesome. Not to mention being able to effortlessly spin up a new environment to try out a new feature. But where do you start? What are these imperative and declarative approaches people are talking about? Should we use ARM or Terraform? Or maybe that Bicep thing? Or is Pulumi a better fit?
There are a lot of questions that come up when you start looking at adopting IaC. And some of them are quite important to answer correctly the first time around, as changing the answer is likely to be both costly and time consuming. The goal of this workshop is to create a way for people who are interested in adopting IaC to get more information about the choices that are involved, and the pros and cons of each option. And not just from a theoretical point of view, but also by being able to get practical experience by trying it out on their own.
We start off with an introduction to the subject in theoretical form. This covers the pros and cons of IaC, and the pre-requisites before you can start adopting it, as well as what to look at when selecting the right tool for the job. Once the theoretical part has been covered, we move into the practical section. Here you get to see some of the tools available and how they compare to each other. We will go through the most popular tools for deploying to Azure. Currently that means Azure CLI, ARM templates, Bicep, Terraform and Pulumi. For each tool, we’ll discuss the pros and cons.
After having seen the comparison between them, it’s up to you to decide which of the tools that seem best suited for your scenario (team, solution etc.). Once you have found your favorite, there are labs for each one of them that allows you to get a better feel for what it is like to work with them. This makes it much easier to make an informed decision about the path you want to choose for your future IaC journey. And a truly informed decision is the best way to set yourself up for success!
Chris Klug is a developer badass-as-a-service that either creates or solves problems depending on who you ask. He loves creating and building things. Whether it be a new application, a new kitchen or a new RC helicopter, you will see him building things all the time. Most of the time, that means writing code and solving problems for clients at a company called Active Solution in Stockholm though. Except for the many days he spends at conferences and usergroups, talking about doing things he is passionate about, and for the days he goes mountain biking, IPSC shooting, kiteboarding or RC helicopter flying.
For the last 15-something years, he has been solving problems for customers, and loving it. But if he gets to choose, he'll go to the beach and kitesurf every day!
Jakob Ehn works as a Cloud architecture and DevOps specialist at Active Solution. For more than 20 years, has has been building software solutions, educating developers and teams on Microsoft technologies through training, books, and conference talks.
Jakob is a Microsoft Azure MVP (former ALM/DevOps MVP). He is a regular speaker at various conferences and user groups around the world, such as NDC, Techorama, DevSum, CloudBrew, UpdateConf and SweTugg.