Day Two Cloud 127: Avoiding Infrastructure As Code (IaC) Pitfalls

There are a lot of good things you can do with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for automation, repeatability, and ease of operations and development. But there are also code and infrastructure pitfalls where you can tumble into a hole, break your leg, and get eaten by spiders. OK, maybe not  that bad, but on today’s episode we talk about potential IaC pitfalls and how to avoid them. Our guest is Tim Davis, DevOps Advocate for env0. We discuss: * Criteria for picking the right IaC framework and tools * Cultural vs. technical pitfalls * Handling a diverse set of targets * Rollback and your framework choice * Security ownership in IaC * Why testing and more testing are essential * More Show Links: @vTimD – Tim Davis on Twitter Transcript: [00:00:04.310] – Ethan Welcome to Day Two Cloud. Oh, baby, infrastructure is codenet. Infrastructure is code, and the pitfalls thereof is our topic. Today. Our guest is Tim Davis, and Tim had given a talk at a conference we’re will mention along the way and was really rushed in this conference trying to share his wisdom, and we were able to get him on the show to dive more into the pitfalls of infrastructure, which makes it sound like a negative topic. But it wasn’t really a negative topic, was it, dad? [00:00:32.310] – Ned No, very positive, because there are a lot of awesome things you can do with IAC, assuming that you approach it correctly and you try to avoid those pitfalls. So we had a great conversation about the people, the process, and even the tools you might use to implement infrastructure as code. [00:00:48.870] – Ethan Yes. And lest you think infrastructure AKS code is like one of those things the other people are doing. No, no, we’re going to hit this right at the top. That infrastructure code is for everyone. Enjoy this conversation with Tim Davis. Tim Davis, welcome to Day Two Cloud today. It is a pleasure to have you, sir, after hearing your talk in all day DevOps and for the folks that don’t know you in just a sentence, who are you and what do you do? [00:01:12.810] – Tim I am Tim Davis. I am the DevOps advocate with env0. [00:01:16.950] – Ethan Okay, now your talk that I was referring to is the pitfalls of infrastructure AKS code. Well, let’s start with a little bit of just generic IAC talk. Who is infrastructure as code for Tim? [00:01:31.590] – Tim Anybody at this point. So this is kind of an interesting space that I’ve seen. There are so many different personas, if you will, that are using it. You’ve got the infrastructure folks that are trying to make their lives a little bit easier. You’ve got development folks in smaller shops that are having to handle the infrastructure themselves. It really kind of goes across the board. [00:01:53.730] – Ethan Okay, everyone, that is fair. Especially when we get into your talk, which you addressed, notably Pitfalls, which really grabs people’s attention. Wait a minute. Is IAC bad? But really, you’re just getting into the practice of IAC and kind of ways to make mistakes you could make that you shouldn’t make. Well, okay, in that talk, you mentioned that IC has the pitfalls of infrastructure and code. What are you getting, Tim? It sounds so serious, Tim. Why so serious, Tim? [00:02:25.410] – Tim Yeah, it’s just one of those things that when you’re thinking about what kind of problems you can run into with really, any kind of project. There’s lots of things that come along with lots of different topics. And with infrastructure AKS code,