Infrastructure Resource Lifecycle

Infrastructure as Code means a way of provisioning resources in a repeatable and consistent manner.

The underlying concepts are also relevant to the broader roles of infrastructure technology operations.

The stages of the lifecycle are as follows:

1. Resource provisioning. Administrators provision the resources according to the specifications they want.
2. Configuration management. The resources become components of a configuration management system that supports activities such as tuning and patching.
3. Monitoring and performance. Monitoring and performance tools validate the operational status of the resources by examining items such as metrics, synthetic transactions, and log files.
4. Compliance and governance. Compliance and governance frameworks drive additional validation to ensure alignment with corporate and industry standards, as well as regulatory requirements.
5. Resource optimization. Administrators review performance dataand identify changes needed to optimize the environment around criteria such as performance and cost management.

Each stage involves procedures that can leverage code. This extends the benefits of Infrastructure as Code from its traditional role in provisioning to the entire resource lifecycle.

Every lifecycle then benefits from the consistency and repeatability that Infrastructure as Code offers. This expanded view of Infrastructure as Code results in a higher degree of maturity in the Information Technology (IT) organization as a whole.