Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) has emerged as a foundational practice in modern cloud computing, enabling the automated provisioning, configuration, and management of infrastructure through machine-readable code. This approach replaces manual processes with repeatable and version-controlled workflows, improving consistency, scalability, and deployment speed. This study provides a comprehensive overview of IaC in cloud systems, examining its core principles, tools, and methodologies. It explores widely used IaC frameworks such as Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and Ansible, highlighting their roles in enabling continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. The paper also discusses the benefits of IaC, including reduced human error, faster environment provisioning, improved collaboration, and enhanced system reliability. Additionally, it addresses key challenges such as security risks, configuration drift, tool complexity, and governance issues, along with strategies to mitigate them. The findings emphasize that IaC is a critical enabler of DevOps and cloud-native architectures, supporting efficient, scalable, and reliable infrastructure management in dynamic cloud environments.
Rahul Banerjee (Tue,) studied this question.
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