- Community Home
- >
- Solutions
- >
- Infrastructure Insights
- >
- Why viewing infrastructure as code is the next log...
-
-
Categories
- Topics
- Hybrid IT with Cloud
- Mobile & IoT
- IT for Data & Analytics
- Transformation
- Strategy and Technology
- Products
- Cloud
- Integrated Systems
- Networking
- Servers and Operating Systems
- Services
- Storage
- Company
- Events
- Partner Solutions and Certifications
- Welcome
- Welcome
- Announcements
- Tips and Tricks
- Feedback
-
Blogs
- Alliances
- Around the Storage Block
- Behind the scenes @ Labs
- Converged Data Center Infrastructure
- Digital Transformation
- Grounded in the Cloud
- HPE Careers
- HPE Storage Tech Insiders
- Infrastructure Insights
- Inspiring Progress
- Internet of Things (IoT)
- My Learning Certification
- Networking
- OEM Solutions
- Servers: The Right Compute
- Telecom IQ
- Transforming IT
-
Quick Links
- Community
- Getting Started
- FAQ
- Ranking Overview
- Rules of Participation
- Contact
- Email us
- Tell us what you think
- Information Libraries
- Integrated Systems
- Networking
- Servers
- Storage
- Other HPE Sites
- Support Center
- Enterprise.nxt
- Marketplace
- Aruba Airheads Community
-
Categories
-
Forums
-
Blogs
-
InformationEnglish
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Receive email notifications
- Email to a Friend
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
Why viewing infrastructure as code is the next logical step for IT
Why viewing infrastructure as code is the next logical step for IT
By: Ben Lovejoy
"Man minus the machine is a slave; man plus the machine is a freeman." So said Henry Ford, long before the emergence of infrastructure as code.
One of the defining characteristics of an IT aficionado is belief that same view—that anything that can be performed by a machine should be performed by a machine. Not just because automated approaches are faster, cheaper, and more reliable, but because they free us from the drudgery of repetitive tasks, allowing us to focus on what machines aren't yet very good at: thinking.
The evolution of automation
In the early part of the twentieth century, automation was about mechanical devices; in the latter half, it was about electronic ones. In the twenty-first century, it's about taking automation to the next level.
Enter the concept of infrastructure as code. Treating infrastructure as code means that the IT team does the intelligent bit—determining what needs to happen to meet business needs. The actual nuts and bolts of realizing that vision, from initial provisioning to application deployment, is taken care of by the software.
This philosophy goes far beyond scripting. With scripting, you tell the systems what they should do; with an infrastructure-as-code approach, you simply define the desired end result, and the automated systems achieve that result, regardless of the starting point or issues encountered along the way. This is a far faster and more reliable approach than relying on procedural scripts, which merely complete a fixed sequence of steps.
The ultimate goal
The Holy Grail of infrastructure as code has been described as the ability to completely replicate or reconstruct a business using nothing but a source code repository, a data backup, and access to the combination of bare metal and cloud computing resources on which it all ran.
That vision may yet be some way off, but tools like Chef mean that we're already a long way down that road. Building, deploying, and managing infrastructure are all things that can be automated in much the same way as we might image a set of laptops.
The full vision will one day be realized. There will come a time—not too far off now—where taking a scripting approach will seem as antiquated as manually installing software on laptops. IT will be about figuring out what solutions are required to meet a business need, with most of the work needed to implement that vision being executed by code.
The first step toward that future is the change in mindset—the second is investigating just how far down that road you can go today. Start your journey first by reading Get faster value from 'infrastructure as code'.
- Back to Blog
- Newer Article
- Older Article
- Back to Blog
- Newer Article
- Older Article
- Subscribe to RSS Feed
- Mark as New
- Mark as Read
- Bookmark
- Receive email notifications
- Email to a Friend
- Printer Friendly Page
- Report Inappropriate Content
- MargaretN on: How IT decision-makers are impacting business IT a...
- JudyGoldman on: Blockchain is more than just digital money
- JudyGoldman on: Break down the IT silos that slow delivery of serv...
- KellyBaig on: IT skills gap is holding you back—and blocking inn...
- Roger Mallett on: Why viewing infrastructure as code is the next log...
- paulahwa on: Hyper-convergence and Cloud: a perfect romance
- acemary on: The cost of downtime: How DevOps can save you doll...
- Tricia Andrew on: CAPEX, OPEX, and the financial leaks that drain yo...
- Christian Verstraete on: How to achieve app transformation with the cloud
- Ahargett on: Fast, Fluid, and Flexible: Building Agile IT with ...
-
Agility
1 -
application
1 -
Automate and Orchestration
1 -
Automation and Orchestration
96 -
CIO
20 -
CIO leadership
20 -
CIO of future
20 -
CIOs
20 -
cloud security
1 -
Cloudline
1 -
Composable Infrastructure
2 -
Data Center Infrastructure
4 -
Digital Transformation
1 -
economic control
1 -
Federal IT
1 -
financial services
1 -
Flexible Capacity
4 -
GDPR
4 -
Gen 10
1 -
Gen10
7 -
HP Infrastructure Insights
3 -
HP Insights
20 -
HP OneView
2 -
HPE Discover
1 -
hybrid infrastructure
1 -
Hybrid IT
5 -
hyper-convergence
1 -
in-memory computing
1 -
Infrastructure
1 -
Infrastructure Automation
1 -
Infrastructure Security
2 -
Innovation at Work
5 -
IT Consumption Model
1 -
IT Security
8 -
IT transformation
1 -
managing IT operations
1 -
Microsoft
1 -
New Style of Busines
3 -
New Style of Business
95 -
New style of IT
35 -
Office Connect
1 -
platform architecture
1 -
ProLiant
3 -
real time analytics
1 -
Reference Architecture
2 -
SAP HANA
1 -
Security
3 -
Server Infrastructure
1 -
server security
1 -
StoreVirtual 3000
1 -
synergy
1 -
the new style of business
29 -
the new style of IT
1 -
Transformation
1 -
Tribbles
1

Hewlett Packard Enterprise International
- Communities
- HPE Blogs and Forum
© Copyright 2018 Hewlett Packard Enterprise Development LP