Lesson 24 / 26

Infrastructure as Code Awareness

Describing your AWS resources as reviewable, repeatable code.

Why IaC

Infrastructure as Code describes your AWS resources in a file instead of clicking through the console — so infra changes go through review, version control, and repeatable deploys, like application code.

A minimal snippet

Defining one S3 bucket declaratively with Terraform.

resource "aws_s3_bucket" "app" {
  bucket = "my-app-bucket"
}

Output:

terraform apply creates (or updates) exactly this bucket

CloudFormation vs Terraform

CloudFormation is AWS-native, no extra tooling needed. Terraform is a popular third-party tool that works across multiple clouds using the same language — pick based on whether you need multi-cloud.

Quick check: What is the main benefit of describing infrastructure as code instead of clicking through the console?

  • It makes servers run faster
  • Changes become reviewable, versioned, and repeatable
  • It removes the need for IAM permissions
Answer

Changes become reviewable, versioned, and repeatable — IaC turns infrastructure changes into code that can be reviewed, versioned, and reliably reapplied.