Managing infrastructure can be complex, especially as your organization grows.

Here are the top 3 common weak points in infrastructure management and how to mitigate them:

1. Single-Repo Bottlenecks

The Challenge

Monorepos can be appealing due to the lack of inter-repo dependencies. However, as infrastructure grows, this can lead to significant bottlenecks, with large Terraform applies becoming sloooooooooooow 🐌.

Good Practices

Multiplie IaC repositories that are well structured are often a better solution, to break down infrastructure into manageable chunks. It reduces complexity, though it introduces challenges around codebases and module dependencies. Good practices to handle them:

• Dependency Management Tools: Tools like Terragrunt or Anyshift.io help manage multiple repositories dependencies effectively.

• State Management: Use Terraform Cloud, Spacelift, env0.. or S3 buckets for robust state management, including remote state storage and locking mechanisms.

• Visualization: Tools like Blast Radius provide interactive visualizations of Terraform dependency graphs to help understand and manage complexity.

Tutorials : Advanced Tips & Tricks to Optimize your Terraform Code

2. Shadow IT, clickOps & Dead IaC Code

The Challenge

IaC modules often become deprecated quickly, leading to many obsolete modules and outdated repositories. This creates a drift between what’s running in the cloud and what’s defined in the IaC code, resulting in a broken source of truth and shadow IT running into the cloud.

Good Practices

• Regular Audits: Regularly audit and clean up IaC repositories.

• Automation Tools: Utilize tools that identify dead code and outdated modules. Tools like Terragrunt can automate part of this process with manual configuration for oversight.

• Code-to-Cloud Search: Tools such as Anyshift’s cloud-to-code search help find orphan resources and get coverage of your IaC.

• Cost Management: Tools like Infracost help manage and estimate cloud costs associated with IaC.

Tutorial: Managing Terraform with Terragrunt

3. Maintaining All Your Modules in Sync: Version Control & Inconsistencies

The Challenge

Multiple repositories can lead to too many inter-repo dependencies, creating intricate logic for various configurations. Additionally, hardcoded values reduce flexibility and reusability, complicating change management and configuration consistency.

Good Practices

• Versioned Modules: Use versioned modules with clearly defined dependencies to manage infrastructure configurations efficiently.

• Automation and Management Tools: Implement tools like tf-controller or Terragrunt to automate and streamline infrastructure management.

• Change Insights: Use Anyshift’s cloud-to-code change insights to anticipate the impact of changes on your production environment and track infrastructure changes over time.

• Documentation Generation: Use Terraform-docs to generate documentation for Terraform modules automatically.

• Testing Frameworks: Tools like Terratest make it easier to write automated tests for your infrastructure code.

Blog Post : Applying GitOps Principles to Infrastructure: An overview of tf-controller

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Roxane from Anyshift 🙂