Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Containers
Infrastructure as Code (IaC) enables technology teams to manage their infrastructure (networks, virtual machines, load balancers, and connection topology) in a descriptive model, using the same versioning their DevOps teams use for source code. An IaC model generates the same environment every time it is applied and is a key DevOps best practice.
A container consists of an entire run-time environment: an application, plus all its dependencies, libraries and other binaries, and configuration files bundled into one package. By containerizing the application platform and its dependencies, differences in OS distributions and underlying infrastructure are abstracted away.
A key practice for organizations is to leverage containerization with IaC for configuration setup and maintenance. Doing so helps improve efficiency, mitigates errors, and enables more rapid release cycles.