devops-iac-engineer

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Key DevOps Terminology (Consistent Throughout)

• Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Managing infrastructure through declarative code files

• GitOps: Using Git as the single source of truth for infrastructure and applications

• Immutable Infrastructure: Infrastructure components that are replaced rather than modified

• Service Mesh: Infrastructure layer for service-to-service communication

• Observability: Ability to understand system state from external outputs (logs, metrics, traces)

• SLI/SLO/SLA: Service Level Indicators/Objectives/Agreements for reliability

• RTO/RPO: Recovery Time Objective/Recovery Point Objective for disaster recovery

Workflow: Infrastructure Implementation

When implementing infrastructure, follow this structured approach:

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Understand Requirements

• What is the business need? (new application, migration, scaling, compliance)

• What are the scale requirements? (traffic, data, geographic distribution)

• What are the constraints? (budget, timeline, regulatory)

• What are the dependencies? (existing systems, data sources)

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Design Architecture

• Choose appropriate cloud platform(s) and services

• Design for high availability and fault tolerance

• Plan network topology and security boundaries

• Identify data flows and storage requirements

• Document architecture with diagrams

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Select IaC Tools

• Terraform for multi-cloud infrastructure provisioning

• Kubernetes manifests/Helm for container orchestration

• CI/CD tool selection based on team and requirements

• Configuration management tools if needed

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Implement Infrastructure

• Create modular, reusable IaC code

• Follow security best practices (see security.md)

• Implement proper state management and versioning

• Use consistent naming and tagging conventions

• Document code and create README files

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Set Up Observability

• Define SLIs and SLOs for critical services

• Implement logging, metrics, and tracing

• Create dashboards and alerts

• Set up log aggregation and analysis

• Plan on-call rotation and runbooks

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Implement CI/CD

• Design deployment pipeline stages

• Implement automated testing (unit, integration, e2e)

• Set up GitOps workflows

• Configure deployment strategies (blue/green, canary)

• Implement rollback procedures

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Test & Validate

• Run infrastructure tests (security, compliance, cost)

• Perform disaster recovery drills

• Load testing and performance validation

• Security scanning and penetration testing

• Document test results and improvements

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Deploy & Monitor

• Execute phased rollout

• Monitor metrics and logs closely

• Validate against SLOs

• Document runbooks and troubleshooting guides

• Conduct post-deployment review

Decision Framework: Tool Selection

Multi-Cloud Requirements → Terraform or Pulumi

AWS-Only → Terraform, AWS CDK, or CloudFormation

Container Orchestration → Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS)

Simple Container Deployment → ECS, Cloud Run, or App Service

Configuration Management → Ansible or cloud-native solutions

GitOps Workflows → ArgoCD or Flux

CI/CD Pipelines → GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins

Common Challenges & Solutions

Problem: Infrastructure drift between code and reality

Solution: Implement automated drift detection, use terraform plan in CI/CD, enable read-only production access, maintain state file integrity

Problem: Secrets management and credential exposure

Solution: Use cloud-native secret managers (AWS Secrets Manager, HashiCorp Vault), implement SOPS for encrypted secrets in Git, use IRSA/workload identity

Problem: High cloud costs and unexpected bills

Solution: Implement tagging strategy, use cost allocation tags, set up budget alerts, right-size resources, use spot instances, implement auto-scaling

Problem: Complex Kubernetes configurations

Solution: Use Helm charts for templating, implement Kustomize for environment-specific configs, follow GitOps patterns, use operators for complex workloads

Collaboration Tips

• With Development Teams: Provide self-service platforms, document APIs, share infrastructure as reusable modules

• With Security Teams: Implement policy as code, automate compliance checks, provide audit trails

• With SRE Teams: Define SLIs/SLOs together, share on-call responsibilities, collaborate on incident response

• With Finance Teams: Provide cost visibility, forecast expenses, implement chargeback models

Next Steps

• Start with terraform.md if you're implementing infrastructure as code

• Use kubernetes.md for container orchestration

• Reference templates.md for ready-to-use configurations

• Check observability.md to set up monitoring

Note: Always verify current infrastructure state, security requirements, and compliance needs before implementing changes. This Skill provides frameworks and best practices but should be adapted to your organization's specific requirements.