Infrastructure plays a pivotal role in delivering digital services and driving business growth. However, managing infrastructure across complex and heterogeneous environments can be challenging. This is where programmable infrastructure comes into play.
Programmable infrastructure refers to managing infrastructure as code and applying software development approaches to automate infrastructure provisioning, configuration, and management. As per Gartner, "Infrastructure and operations leaders must adopt programmable infrastructure to remain competitive, foster innovation, reduce risk and accelerate time to market."
In this comprehensive guide, we will explore what is programmable infrastructure, benefits of adopting it, use cases, steps for implementation, challenges, and outlook for 2024. Let‘s get started!
What is Programmable Infrastructure?
Programmable infrastructure treats infrastructure as code rather than physical hardware. It utilizes APIs, SDKs, CLIs, and other tools to automate infrastructure provisioning, deployment, testing, and ongoing management.
The key principles of programmable infrastructure include:
-
Infrastructure as Code: Codifying the infrastructure configuration makes it reusable, portable and version controlled like application code.
-
API-driven Automation: Exposing infrastructure elements as APIs allows automating provisioning, deployment, scaling through scripts or infrastructure as code tools.
-
Declarative Model: The desired end state of infrastructure is declared through code rather than step-by-step procedures. The infrastructure reconciles to match the declared state.
-
Immutable Infrastructure: Servers are never modified after deployment. To make changes, new immutable infrastructure is provisioned and old ones are decommissioned.
-
Self-Service: Developers and app teams can provision infrastructure on-demand through self-service models like infrastructure as code instead of tickets to IT.
By adopting these principles, organizations can gain agility, consistency, improved productivity and reduced risk.
Key Benefits of Programmable Infrastructure
Here are some of the major benefits of adopting programmable infrastructure:
-
Speed and Agility: Automating manual tasks accelerates deployments from weeks to minutes. IT can deliver infrastructure rapidly to meet business needs.
-
Consistency and Reliability: Infrastructure as code eliminates manual errors leading to consistent and predictable environments.
-
Improved Productivity: Automation frees up developers and IT from mundane tasks so they can focus on innovation.
-
Cost Optimization: Programmatic control minimizes waste and improves utilization by scaling infrastructure based on demand.
-
Reduced Risk: Automated testing, immutable infrastructure, and rollbacks reduce chances of failures and outages.
-
Portability: Infrastructure defined through code is abstracted from underlying platform allowing portable deployments across cloud, on-prem and edge.
-
Compliance: Codified procedures for infrastructure deployment and management support compliance with security policies and industry regulations.
Major Use Cases and Applications
Here are some common use cases where programmable infrastructure delivers immense value:
Cloud Infrastructure Automation
Programmable infrastructure is a natural fit for automating infrastructure management in public clouds like AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Cloud providers offer APIs, CLI, infrastructure as code tools like CloudFormation to help codify and automate:
- Provisioning infrastructure like virtual machines, storage, networks
- Deploying software stacks, apps and services on the provisioned infrastructure
- Managing the cloud infrastructure lifecycle including scaling, backups, access controls
This enables IT teams to manage complex multi-cloud environments efficiently through code rather than manual processes.
Kubernetes and Container Infrastructure
Programmable infrastructure is integral to automating container orchestration platforms like Kubernetes. Kubernetes provides declarative APIs to define the desired state of applications and infrastructure. Users can define app architectures, configure policies for auto-scaling, rollouts through Kubernetes resource manifests and automate container deployment pipelines.
On-prem and Hybrid Infrastructure
While public cloud providers offer native automation capabilities, on-prem environments need additional tools to enable programmable infrastructure. Solutions like RedHat Ansible, Terraform and Puppet help codify the configuration of on-prem VMs, networks, storage in an IaC model. This allows automating on-prem infrastructure along with consistency across cloud and on-prem environments.
Edge Infrastructure
As edge computing gains traction, automating edge infrastructure configuration, management will be critical given the distributed scale and connectivity constraints. Programmable infrastructure will allow managing thousands of edge nodes efficiently through automation rather than manual processes.
Steps for Implementing Programmable Infrastructure
Migrating to programmable infrastructure requires carefully executed steps:
1. Assess Existing Infrastructure
Analyze the current infrastructure landscape across on-prem, cloud, containers, network and storage. Identify manual processes and gaps in automation capabilities.
2. Define Infrastructure as Code
Determine how existing infrastructure can be codified leveraging templating languages like YAML, JSON, HCL. Create reusable templates encapsulating infrastructure configuration and dependencies.
3. Standardize Provisioning Interfaces
Rationalize provisioning interfaces like CLI, APIs, SDKs across tools and cloud platforms. This simplifies automation through unified interfaces.
4. Automate Infrastructure Testing
Automated testing is key to reducing risk. Leverage frameworks like Terratest, InSpec, Robot Framework to test infrastructure correctness.
5. Implement CI/CD Pipelines
Set up CI/CD pipelines to integrate infrastructure provisioning and deployment with application release processes for speed and consistency.
6. Shift to Immutable Infrastructure
Transition from modifying existing servers to immutable infrastructure patterns for improved reliability.
7. Enable Self-Service Automation
Expose templates and workflows as self-service for on-demand infrastructure provisioning by developers and app teams through enterprise portals.
8. Instrument Infrastructure
Collect metrics to monitor utilization, performance, availability and feed data for analytics and AIOPs.
Key Challenges in Adopting Programmable Infrastructure
While programmable infrastructure unlocks significant benefits, it also poses some key challenges:
- Requires fundamental shifts in processes, tooling and culture which take time.
- Scarcity of skills like automation, programming languages required to codify infrastructure.
- Integrating automation across disparate tools and environments is complex.
- Testing infrastructure as code rigorously needed to prevent failures.
- Overcoming resistance from teams comfortable with legacy manual processes.
- Maintaining security and access controls in self-service models.
Programmable Infrastructure Outlook for 2024
Here are some key trends expected in programmable infrastructure:
- Multi-cloud automation will gain significant traction as hybrid and multi-cloud adoption increases.
- Shift left of infrastructure provisioning and testing into the CI/CD application pipelines will accelerate.
- Intelligent automation using AIOps will help monitor, analyze and remediate infrastructure issues automatically.
- Security automation will be built natively into infrastructure as code workflows.
- Autonomous operations driven by AI will reduce manual tasks and effort.
- Infrastructure abstraction will evolve further with containerization and unifying interfaces.
As infrastructure complexity increases exponentially, programmable infrastructure will become critical for managing infrastructure efficiently and benefiting from it. Adopting it requires strategic planning considering current maturity, processes, and culture of an organization. With the right foundation, programmable infrastructure can drive agility, innovation and competitive differentiation for modern digital businesses.