Software development teams are under constant pressure to deliver high-quality products in a timely manner. However, the rise of complex cloud-based infrastructure has made infrastructure management increasingly challenging. This is where Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) comes into play, allowing teams to manage their infrastructure in a programmatic way.

Among the many IaC solutions available, Pulumi has emerged as a popular choice for teams looking to streamline their infrastructure management process. In the video below, our very own Differential developers, Brandon Kraeling and Marcelo Reyna, break down the benefits of Pulumi as an Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solution.

We hope you find this valuable as you explore an IaC solution for your project team!

Note: During the presentation, EASE, a big data powered operations management platform, is referenced as a case study for how we’re using Pulumi at Differential.

Video: https://youtu.be/0JhycA9NgIE

What is infrastructure-as-code?

Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) is an approach to managing infrastructure resources (e.g., servers, networks, storage) using machine-readable files or code, instead of manually configuring them through a graphical user interface (GUI) or a command-line interface (CLI).

This code can be versioned, reviewed, tested, and deployed like any other software code. Infrastructure as code helps to automate the provisioning, configuration, and management of infrastructure resources, leading to improved efficiency, consistency, and scalability, while reducing the risk of errors and increasing the agility of teams to respond to changing business needs.

Advantages of infrastructure-as-code

Infrastructure-as-code (IaC) offers several advantages. Here are a snapshot of the top five advantages our team identified:

1. IaC allows developers to write infrastructure code in a language they are already familiar with, reducing the need to learn new skills.
2. Enables the creation of reusable constructs, making it easier to maintain consistency across different resources.
3. Constructs can take inputs from other constructs, simplifying the process of managing secrets and eliminating the need for manual configuration.
4. IaC allows for different levels of infrastructure management, and changes can be easily tracked and reflected in the code.
5. It’s easier to understand how data is flowing and allows for easier collaboration among developers.

To learn more about when to adopt IaC for your project team, read Infrastructure-as-Code Is Great, but When Do You Need It?

Pulumi: Your IaC solution for project teams

We use Pulumi as our Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) solution for several reasons. First, Pulumi is a level two solution with excellent state management capabilities. It allows our developers to take a snapshot of their deployed resources and see the changes before deploying them, making it easier to identify any issues before they occur. Pulumi also has powerful secrets management capabilities, making it easier to manage and encrypt sensitive information.

Pulumi offers a vast library of pre-built constructs, reducing the complexity of building them from scratch. Instead of creating a resource like an RDS database, Pulumi provides pre-built constructs that spin up all the affiliated resources the database needs. This makes the infrastructure configuration process much more manageable.

Finally, Pulumi integrates well with continuous delivery pipelines, making it easy to configure automation and keep all resources in sync. Pulumi also offers custom integrations to attach it to pull requests and have it deploy code to ensure that nothing breaks during the deployment process.

Pulumi's ability to manage state and easily share data between infrastructure constructs make it an ideal choice for Differential. With Pulumi, we can manage infrastructure with ease, reducing the complexity of infrastructure management while also increasing security and automation.