How do you handle infrastructure as code (IaC) in CI/CD pipelines?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) allows defining and managing infrastructure resources such as servers or networks through code, ensuring environmental consistency and reproducibility. It is crucial in CI/CD pipelines, enabling automated deployment of infrastructure changes, with application scenarios including cloud-native application release and environment management.

The core of IaC includes tools like Terraform or Ansible, featuring declarative syntax and version control integration. In principle, code defines the infrastructure state and is stored in Git repositories. In CI/CD pipelines, IaC tools are integrated to automatically test and deploy changes, supporting reusable blueprints for infrastructure, significantly enhancing the reliability and efficiency of DevOps practices.

Implementation requires integration into CI/CD stages: defining IaC scripts and hosting them in version control repositories; running code scans (e.g., TFLint) and simulation tests in the CI stage; automatically deploying changes to environments in the CD stage. Typical scenarios include environment creation when launching new features; business values are reducing manual errors, accelerating delivery cycles, and optimizing costs.