Kief Morris: Implementing Infrastructure as Code

New technologies for managing infrastructure are erupting across the industry - cloud, containers, and automated configuration tools to name a few. These technologies promise to let us continuously deliver software and services at a pace that keeps up with the ever-changing needs of our users. But can we do this without sacrificing operational qualities like security, availability, performance, and legal compliance?

Infrastructure as Code is the "A(utomation)" in the DevOps "CALMS" model. It leverages agile engineering tools and practices to provision and manage highly reliable infrastructure at speed.

This talk explains how a team can implement a change management pipeline to create a fast, reliable process for building and maintaining a testing and hosting infrastructure for their microservices-based system. The talk presents a hypothetical application team, and walks through the creation of a cloud-based infrastructure using automation tools such as Packer, Terraform, and Ansible. A tracer bullet pipeline is used to deliver a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) to production. Automated testing tools including Serverspec are used to test the infrastructure as it evolves with the application to add more sophisticated capabilities, including continuous disaster recovery.

The Talk will be in English!

About Kief Morris:

Kief Morris is Cloud Practice Lead at ThoughtWorks. He works with organisations to understand how to take advantage of cloud, infrastructure automation, DevOps, and Continuous Delivery to become more effective at delivering IT services. Originally from Tennessee, Kief has been based in London since the dot-com days.

Agenda:

18:30: Get together
19:00: Talk & Discussion
20:30: Networking, Drinks & Snacks