Embracing Everything as Code (EaC): The Evolution from Manual Complexities to Automated Efficiency

For decades, system administrators have been the backbone of enterprise IT, meticulously crafting custom systems to meet the unique demands of their employers and clients. These hand-built systems certainly had their advantages — tailored to fit a specific purpose — but the benefits often came at a cost. Manual configurations were prone to inconsistencies, delays, and even outright failures, leading to many sleepless nights for those tasked with maintaining these systems. Over time, as businesses demanded faster and more reliable processes, this manual approach became increasingly unsustainable.

In response to these challenges, the IT community began adopting automation through the DevOps movement. This introduced a more systematic, reliable way of managing infrastructure, software, and deployments. But even DevOps wasn’t the final solution — something more comprehensive emerged: Everything as Code (EaC).

Understanding Everything as Code: A Philosophy, not a Tool

The first thing to understand about Everything as Code (EaC) is that it’s not a specific technology or a clever piece of software. Rather, it’s a philosophy that revolves around the idea of treating as many parts of your application, infrastructure, and processes as possible as code. This approach goes beyond simply automating a few scripts; it involves codifying your infrastructure, configurations, security policies, and operational processes in a way that allows for version control, automation, and reproducibility at every step.

EaC enables organizations to manage their entire IT ecosystem — from servers and network configurations to CI/CD pipelines and security checks — using code. This code is checked into source control, reviewed, tested, and continuously improved by engineers, just like application code. This shift leads to environments that are more consistent, scalable, and reliable than those maintained manually.

From Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to Everything as Code (EaC)

The journey toward EaC began with Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Early DevOps practices focused on automating infrastructure provisioning through code, eliminating the need for manual configuration of servers, storage, and networks. With IaC, teams could define infrastructure through machine-readable scripts, leading to more reliable deployments.

However, as cloud computing became more prominent, the scope of what could be automated expanded. Teams moved from managing a few powerful servers to orchestrating large-scale systems of interconnected microservices. This transition called for a broader application of the “as code” concept, leading to the rise of Everything as Code.

EaC encompasses not just infrastructure but also Configuration as Code (CaC), Security as Code (SaC), and Pipelines as Code. It allows organizations to fully automate their IT operations from the ground up.

Why Move to Everything as Code?

The move toward Everything as Code requires a significant shift in mindset and operations. For teams that are used to manually configuring their systems or relying on a patchwork of scripts, adopting EaC can feel like a steep hill to climb. However, the benefits are undeniable:

1. Consistency and Reliability

By codifying all aspects of the IT environment, EaC ensures that configurations and deployments are consistent across environments. Whether deploying to development, testing, or production, you can be sure that everything will work the same way, every time.

2. Automation Reduces Human Error

Manual interventions, by their nature, introduce the risk of human error. By automating deployments, configuration updates, and security checks, EaC reduces this risk significantly, ensuring more predictable and stable environments.

3. Faster, More Reliable Deployments

Deploying code manually can take hours or even days, often requiring downtime that eats into profits. With EaC, deployments become quick and reliable — often taking just minutes. In many cases, teams can deploy dozens of times per day, allowing for faster iterations and quicker responses to customer feedback.

4. Version Control and Auditability

With everything treated as code, version control becomes a natural part of the process. Every change, whether it’s to infrastructure, configuration, or security policies, is tracked and easily auditable. Teams can quickly see why and how changes were made and can roll back to previous versions if needed.

5. Reduced Code Churn

EaC helps create identical environments across development, testing, and production. This uniformity eliminates environment-specific bugs, which are often the result of inconsistent configurations. As a result, developers can focus more on building features rather than troubleshooting setup issues.

Key Components of Everything as Code (EaC) and Recommended Tools

To better understand the impact of EaC, let’s explore its key components and the tools that make them possible:

1. Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

Purpose: IaC is the backbone of EaC, allowing teams to provision and manage infrastructure using code. By defining infrastructure as code, organizations can automate the deployment of servers, networks, and storage, ensuring repeatability and consistency.

Tools:

• Terraform: An open-source tool by HashiCorp that allows teams to define cloud and on-premises infrastructure using declarative configuration files.
• AWS CloudFormation: An AWS-native tool that automates resource provisioning using templates, enabling repeatable and scalable deployments.
• Pulumi: An infrastructure-as-code platform that supports multiple programming languages for defining and managing infrastructure.

Example: Deploying an Azure Web App and SQL Database using Terraform:

provider "azurerm" {
  features {}
}

resource "azurerm_resource_group" "example" {
  name     = "myResourceGroup"
  location = "West Europe"
}

resource "azurerm_app_service_plan" "example" {
  name                = "myAppServicePlan"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.example.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.example.name
  sku {
    tier = "Standard"
    size = "S1"
  }
}

resource "azurerm_app_service" "example" {
  name                = "myWebApp"
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.example.location
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.example.name
  app_service_plan_id = azurerm_app_service_plan.example.id
}

resource "azurerm_sql_server" "example" {
  name                         = "mySqlServer"
  resource_group_name          = azurerm_resource_group.example.name
  location                     = azurerm_resource_group.example.location
  administrator_login          = "adminuser"
  administrator_login_password = "H@Sh1CoR3!"
}

resource "azurerm_sql_database" "example" {
  name                = "myDatabase"
  resource_group_name = azurerm_resource_group.example.name
  location            = azurerm_resource_group.example.location
  server_name         = azurerm_sql_server.example.name
}

This Terraform configuration sets up an Azure Web App with a connected SQL Database, automating the entire infrastructure setup.

2. Configuration as Code (CaC)

Purpose: CaC focuses on automating and standardizing configurations across environments. It ensures that performance, security, and application settings are consistent, reducing the risk of misconfigurations.

Tools:

• Ansible: A configuration management tool that automates software provisioning and application configuration.
• Chef: Enables infrastructure configuration management through code, supporting automated deployments and configuration consistency.
• Puppet: A tool for automating the configuration of systems and applications, ensuring environments stay consistent.

Example: Configuring Apache web servers using Ansible:

- hosts: webservers
  become: yes
  tasks:
    - name: Install Apache
      apt:
        name: apache2
        state: present
    - name: Copy Apache configuration file
      template:
        src: templates/apache2.conf.j2
        dest: /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
    - name: Restart Apache
      service:
        name: apache2
        state: restarted

3. Security as Code (SaC)

Purpose: Security as Code is the practice of integrating security policies and measures directly into the development and deployment lifecycle. By codifying security rules, organizations automate and enforce security measures consistently across environments, ensuring that vulnerabilities are detected and mitigated early in the software development process. This approach promotes a proactive security posture and integrates security into the CI/CD pipeline.

Tools:

• Snyk: Integrates with CI/CD pipelines to automatically scan and report security vulnerabilities in code, dependencies, and infrastructure.
• Aqua Security: Provides security solutions for containers and cloud-native applications, enforcing security policies as code.
• HashiCorp Vault: Manages secrets and sensitive data, enforcing encryption and access control through policies defined as code.

Example: Automating security scanning for vulnerabilities using GitLab CI and Trivy:

stages:
  - test

security_scan:
  stage: test
  image: aquasec/trivy:latest
  script:
    - trivy image myapp:latest
    - trivy fs --exit-code 1 --severity HIGH --vuln-type os --ignore-unfixed /

In this example, the code runs Trivy, an open-source security scanner, to detect vulnerabilities in both the application image and the file system, ensuring that any high-severity issues are flagged during the CI process.

4. Pipelines as Code

Purpose: Pipelines as Code automates the CI/CD pipeline process, ensuring that as soon as developers merge their code, it is automatically deployed to the appropriate environment. This approach ensures consistency and efficiency.

Tools:

• Jenkins: An open-source automation server that supports Pipelines as Code through Jenkinsfile, enabling teams to define CI/CD workflows as code.
• GitLab CI/CD: Integrates with GitLab repositories, allowing teams to manage CI/CD processes directly within the codebase.
• GitHub Actions: Offers automated workflows and pipeline management as code, directly within GitHub repositories.

Example: Setting up a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions to deploy a Node.js application:

name: Node.js CI/CD Pipeline

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - main

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v2
      - name: Install dependencies
        run: npm install
      - name: Run tests
        run: npm test
      - name: Deploy to AWS
        run: |
          aws s3 sync ./dist s3://my-bucket
          aws cloudfront create-invalidation --distribution-id E123456 --paths "/*"

5. Policy as Code

Purpose: Policy as Code involves managing and enforcing policies, permissions, and compliance standards through code. By defining policies programmatically, organizations ensure that rules are applied consistently across all environments, enhancing governance and compliance. This approach makes it possible to automate the enforcement of security, access control, and compliance requirements, reducing the manual effort involved in maintaining and auditing policies.

Tools:

• Open Policy Agent (OPA): Enforces governance rules and security policies in various systems, such as Kubernetes clusters, APIs, and CI/CD pipelines.
• AWS Config: Automates the evaluation and compliance monitoring of AWS resources.
• HashiCorp Sentinel: Works with Terraform to enforce policies that manage cloud resources according to defined compliance standards.

Example: Using Terraform and AWS IAM Policies to enforce specific access rules:

resource "aws_iam_policy" "deny_s3_public_access" {
  name        = "DenyS3PublicAccess"
  description = "Policy to deny public access to all S3 buckets"
  
  policy = jsonencode({
    Version = "2012-10-17"
    Statement = [
      {
        Action   = "s3:PutBucketPolicy"
        Effect   = "Deny"
        Resource = "arn:aws:s3:::*"
        Condition = {
          StringEquals = {
            "aws:PrincipalAccount": "123456789012"
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  })
}

This code creates an IAM policy that denies any attempt to set public access on any S3 bucket, ensuring compliance with organizational security standards.

Emerging Trends and Future Opportunities with EaC

The evolution of EaC has led to an explosion of tools and practices that automate nearly every layer of IT infrastructure. As organizations seek to unify and automate their environments further, these trends are becoming central to how DevOps and engineering teams operate:

• Environments as Code: Cloud providers like AWS and Google Cloud offer predefined environments as code, making it easier to deploy and manage consistent, repeatable setups.
• Data Pipelines as Code: Tools like Apache Airflow allow data engineers to define and manage complex data workflows using code, enabling reproducibility and automation in data processing.
• Observability and Monitoring as Code: Tools like Prometheus and Grafana, combined with IaC principles, automate the setup and maintenance of monitoring and alerting systems.

Is Everything as Code Right for Your Organization?

EaC isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. While it offers tremendous benefits for many organizations, especially those operating in complex, dynamic environments, not every business needs the speed and scalability that EaC provides.

For companies that prioritize frequent updates and quick rollouts, EaC can be transformative. It streamlines workflows, reduces manual intervention, and allows businesses to respond more rapidly to market changes. However, for smaller or simpler environments, where updates are infrequent or complexity is lower, the effort required to implement EaC may not be worth the payoff.

Conclusion: Building a Future Where Infrastructure Operates Like Software

The shift to Everything as Code represents a fundamental change in how IT operations are managed. It bridges the gap between software development and IT infrastructure, bringing the maturity, predictability, and agility of software development practices to the management of entire IT ecosystems. As cloud capabilities continue to expand, EaC allows organizations to keep pace, offering tools that automate, scale, and optimize infrastructure management.

As more organizations embrace the EaC mindset, the future of IT will undoubtedly become more automated, consistent, and efficient. If you’re ready to transform your IT operations and fully automate your infrastructure, EaC provides the framework to do so — paving the way for a more agile and innovative future.