Cloud computing heavily relies on IaC, which allows you to provision and manage infrastructure resources using code and automation. Various cloud providers offer IaC solutions and services that help streamline the process of defining, deploying, and managing infrastructure resources. Let us take a look at some of the IaC offerings by major cloud providers.
AWS CloudFormation
AWS CloudFormation is like a blueprint for your cloud infrastructure. It lets you define your entire AWS environment as code using easy-to-read templates, written in YAML or JSON. With CloudFormation, you can specify everything you need, from servers and databases to networks and security settings, in a single document. Then, AWS takes care of creating and managing those resources for you, ensuring your infrastructure is consistent, reproducible, and easily scalable. It’s a powerful tool for automating and streamlining the provisioning and management of your AWS resources, all while following the principles of IaC.
Microsoft ARM templates
Azure provides Azure Resource Manager (ARM) templates, which are JSON files that can be used with Azure DevOps for CD and infrastructure automation. ARM templates enable you to automate the deployment of Azure resources, making it easier to create, modify, and manage complex Azure infrastructures consistently and reproducibly. Just as with AWS CloudFormation, ARM templates are declarative, allowing you to specify what you want, and Azure takes care of figuring out how to make it happen. This approach promotes IaC principles and infrastructure consistency and supports the automation and scalability requirements of modern cloud environments.
Google Cloud Deployment Manager
Google Cloud provides Deployment Manager for IaC. It uses YAML or Python configurations to define Google Cloud resource deployments. Deployment Manager is tailored for managing Google Cloud resources. You can repeatedly deploy the same configuration to create and manage resources consistently, which is essential for maintaining IaC. It integrates seamlessly with other GCP services, making it easy to manage various resources, including VMs, databases, storage, and networking. Google Cloud Identity and Access Management (IAM) can be used to control who has access to create or modify deployments, ensuring security and compliance.
Alibaba Cloud ROS
Alibaba Cloud’s Resource Orchestration Service (ROS) is similar to AWS CloudFormation and allows users to define, provision, and manage cloud infrastructure using declarative templates written in JSON or YAML format. ROS templates describe the desired state of Alibaba Cloud resources, including VMs, databases, networking configurations, and other cloud services. These templates are written in a structured format and can be version-controlled for easy tracking and collaboration. ROS templates define dependencies between resources, ensuring that resources are provisioned in the correct order to meet application requirements.
Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Resource Manager
Oracle Cloud offers Resource Manager, which allows you to define and deploy IaC using Terraform templates. It provides version control and collaboration features.
These are some of the most common IaC tools available to use; most of them come with an open source version, and some also offer enterprise versions with dedicated support. These tools vary in their approach, capabilities, and compatibility with different cloud providers and environments. The choice of an IaC tool depends on factors such as the organization’s infrastructure needs, existing technology stack, cloud provider preferences, and the complexity of the infrastructure to be managed.
Let us now dive deeper into the core topic of this chapter: how do CSPM and IaC work together to enhance security posture?
CSPM and IaC integrationIntegrating IaC and CSPM is crucial for ensuring security in cloud environments.
