Part 3. Managing production complexity

Once multiple teams use infrastructure as code and build a common practice, you must learn to make changes and manage the complexity of production infrastructure. This final part describes techniques for updating infrastructure through IaC and changing IaC itself. You will, after all, change your infrastructure and evolve your tools and configuration!

In chapter 9, you’ll learn how to make changes to infrastructure and minimize the potential for change failure. Chapter 10 describes the process of refactoring IaC, which you may need after growing your practice or system. If your refactor causes infrastructure failure, you can use the general techniques in chapter 11 to roll forward, troubleshoot, and fix your changes.

However, as you continue to grow your system, you will encounter cost concerns. Chapter 12 offers guidance for IaC techniques to manage the cost of infrastructure. Finally, chapter 13 concludes with techniques for using open source tools and modules and replacing or upgrading existing tools.