Company
Date Published
Author
Joe Duffy
Word count
9639
Language
English
Hacker News points
None

Summary

Infrastructure as code (IaC) tools can be categorized into configuration management tools, like Ansible, Chef, and Puppet, which manage existing servers, and provisioning tools, such as Pulumi, Terraform, and CloudFormation, which handle the creation and modification of infrastructure. While provisioning has gained prominence in modern architectures utilizing containers and serverless technologies, configuration management remains crucial for legacy, on-premises, and hybrid environments. The two approaches complement each other, as demonstrated by deploying a WordPress server to AWS using Pulumi for infrastructure provisioning and Ansible for server configuration. This method illustrates the benefits of combining IaC tools, allowing for scalable and repeatable infrastructure deployment while accommodating both mutable and immutable infrastructure needs. The process involves setting up AWS infrastructure, configuring security groups, launching EC2 instances, and using Ansible to automate the WordPress installation, highlighting the synergy between provisioning and configuration management in modernizing cloud architectures.