Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Getting Started Guide
Context
As organizations increasingly adopt cloud-based infrastructure and DevOps practices, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) has become essential for ensuring scalable, consistent, and repeatable deployments. This guide was created to simplify the onboarding process for those new to IaC by introducing three widely used tools: Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, and AWS CDK. The goal was to develop a documentation-style resource that could be easily shared across a team or used in internal knowledge bases such as Jira or Confluence.
Solution
I created a comprehensive guide that explains core IaC concepts in plain language, walks through installation and configuration, and demonstrates how to provision resources using each tool. For each IaC solution (Terraform, CloudFormation, and CDK), I included sample configurations, syntax, version control practices, and beginner-friendly explanations of testing workflows. The guide also includes a table of contents for ease of navigation.
Impact
For an organization, adopting a well-documented IaC approach can significantly reduce manual configuration errors, improve deployment speed, support CI/CD workflows, and strengthen collaboration between development and operations teams. Having clearly written internal documentation ensures that even junior engineers or cross-functional team members can contribute to infrastructure setup and maintenance. This guide can serve as an internal resource for training, reference, and onboarding, helping teams build more resilient, testable, and repeatable infrastructure.
Key Takeaways
- Terraform is ideal for cross-platform infrastructure with its declarative HCL syntax and mature ecosystem.
- AWS CloudFormation is tightly integrated with AWS and supports declarative YAML or JSON templates.
- AWS CDK allows developers to define infrastructure using real programming languages, which can improve code reuse and testability.
- Testing infrastructure is as important as application code. Validating templates, previewing diffs, and using tools like Terratest, TaskCat, or Jest helps prevent outages and misconfigurations.
- Version control and modular file structures are essential for collaboration and tracking infrastructure changes over time.
Reflection
Through this project, I deepened my understanding of not only how these tools work individually, but also how they align with different teams and workflows. Writing this guide challenged me to distill complex topics into digestible sections, which improved my technical writing skills and reinforced my own IaC knowledge from my AWS Cloud Institute journey. I also learned about the importance of infrastructure testing—a frequently overlooked but critical aspect of cloud reliability.
Project Links
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Some code snippets used in the PDF documentation were adapted from my studies at the AWS Cloud Institute. While I didn’t write every line from scratch, I made modifications to match the needs of this project.