How do you handle infrastructure changes and updates with IaC?

IaC (Infrastructure as Code) is the versioned definition and management of infrastructure using code, emphasizing automation, consistency, and repeatability. Its importance lies in eliminating manual errors, ensuring traceable changes, and it is suitable for cloud computing environments such as cloud-native deployments and Kubernetes cluster updates, improving DevOps efficiency.

Its core includes infrastructure definition files (such as Terraform's HCL), state management, and version control systems (such as Git). Based on the declarative principle, IaC tools compare the desired state with the actual state and automatically synchronize changes. In practical applications, it enables automated testing, rollback, and compliance auditing of changes, significantly reducing configuration drift and supporting CI/CD pipelines.

The steps for handling changes are as follows: 1. Modify the code files and commit to version control; 2. Verify the changes in a non-production environment; 3. Go through the code review and merge process; 4. Automatically deploy to production. Typical scenarios include updating cloud load balancers or Kubernetes configurations, bringing business values such as rapid iteration and reduced risk.