Feature stores play a crucial role in machine learning infrastructure by addressing the complexities of data transformation, storage, and access, effectively enabling production-grade machine learning models. They centralize the computation and storage of features, allowing for efficient querying in both real-time and historical contexts, thus ensuring consistency between training and prediction data. The core components of a feature store include sourcing, transforming, storing, and serving data, with additional functionalities such as monitoring and experimenting to detect feature drift and enable iterative development. Feature stores support various data access patterns through online and offline stores and can be integrated into existing data architectures thanks to their agnostic nature. By facilitating collaboration and experimentation, feature stores promote engineering excellence and enable machine learning teams to deploy models confidently and efficiently.