The advent of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has radically changed how IT infrastructure is built and maintained. Instead of building and maintaining servers by hand, tools like Puppet can be used to describe and automatically configure entire data centers.

The implication of this is that the workflow of IT operations is starting to resemble the workflow of a traditional software developer. Writing code to make infrastructure changes instead of directly making changes opens up new opportunities for how changes can be made. The software development field has had 30+ years to learn how to effectively develop code, and their hard won wisdom can be ripped off wholesale to make it a breeze to develop IaC.

This talk will discuss the following:

• Using version control tools to more effectively administer infrastructure
• Writing and using tests to confidently make changes and get feedback earlier
• Using continuous integration services to test changes and run deployments