infrastructure as code
/IN-fruh-struk-chur az kode/ · noun · Development · Origin: 2011
Definitions
The practice of managing and provisioning infrastructure (servers, networks, databases) through machine-readable definition files rather than manual processes or interactive tools. IaC enables version control, peer review, and repeatable deployments for infrastructure. Terraform, Pulumi, and CloudFormation are the dominant tools.
In plain English: Managing servers and cloud resources by writing code files instead of clicking buttons in a dashboard — you can track changes, review them, and repeat them exactly.
Example: After the third time someone fat-fingered a setting in the AWS console and caused an outage, we committed to infrastructure as code and banned console changes entirely.
Related Terms
- Docker
- Terraform
- Provisioning
- DevOps
- SRE
- Config as Code
- GitOps
- immutable infrastructure
- configuration drift
- Auto-scaling
- Container
- Deployment
- IaaS
- Orchestration
- Rake
- Shell Script
- Supervisor
- Environment Variable
- Region
- Spot Instance
- Cold Start
- Egress
- Pre-commit Hook
- Google Cloud Run
- Helm Template
- Launch Configuration
- Task Runner
- Terraform Provider
- Toolchain
- Vagrant
- Virtual Device
- Infrastructure as Code Culture