In modern software development, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines ensure fast and reliable delivery of applications. However, many teams struggle with properly incorporating infrastructure deployments into their pipelines.
With cloud-native architectures, it’s crucial to not only automate application deployments but also manage infrastructure changes effectively. This post explores best practices to include infrastructure deployments in your CI/CD pipelines.
Why Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is Critical
Traditionally, infrastructure management was manual, involving scripts or configuration files that were prone to human error. Infrastructure as Code (IaC) allows you to automate the provisioning and management of infrastructure. With tools like Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, or Ansible, you can define your infrastructure in code and maintain consistency across environments.
Benefits of IaC:
- Consistency: Deploy the same configuration across dev, staging, and production.
- Version Control: Treat infrastructure the same as application code, tracked and reviewed in Git.
- Scalability: Easily replicate environments, including large-scale infrastructure, with little manual effort.
1. Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for Repeatability
A crucial step in incorporating infrastructure deployments into your CI/CD pipeline is using IaC tools. Let’s take Terraform as an example. You can define infrastructure resources (like servers, databases, and networking) in configuration files, versioned and deployed consistently.
Example: In Terraform, a simple resource definition for an AWS EC2 instance might look like this:
resource "aws_instance" "my_server" {
ami = "ami-12345678"
instance_type = "t2.micro"
}
Add this configuration to your repository, and when changes are committed, the CI/CD pipeline will automatically apply those changes using Terraform commands.
Tip: Ensure your IaC is part of the same version control system as your application. This ensures any infrastructure changes are reviewed and deployed alongside the application.
2. Use Separate Pipelines for Application and Infrastructure Deployments
While you might want your infrastructure changes to be tied closely to your application deployments, managing them in separate pipelines is a good practice. This gives you flexibility when only one part of your stack needs to change.
For example:
- Application Pipeline: Build, test, and deploy your application code.
- Infrastructure Pipeline: Deploy your infrastructure as part of IaC.
Many CI/CD platforms like Jenkins, CircleCI, GitLab CI, or GitHub Actions allow you to run pipelines in parallel.
Example in GitHub Actions:
jobs:
app_deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout code
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Deploy Application
run: ./deploy_app.sh
infra_deploy:
runs-on: ubuntu-latest
steps:
- name: Checkout infrastructure code
uses: actions/checkout@v2
- name: Deploy Infrastructure
run: ./deploy_infra.sh
Screenshot idea: A screenshot showing parallel pipelines in GitHub Actions or Jenkins, highlighting how both the application and infrastructure deployment jobs are running simultaneously.
3. Use Environments and Staging Areas
Deploying infrastructure directly to production without a proper test environment can lead to failures or downtime. To mitigate this, create different environments for staging, testing, and production deployments. This enables you to test infrastructure changes before they affect your live environment.
In Terraform, for example, you can manage environments with workspaces:
terraform workspace new staging
terraform apply
terraform workspace select production
terraform apply
This setup ensures that your staging environment is updated first, and production is only modified after everything works as expected.
Screenshot idea: Show Terraform workspaces with separate environments like “staging” and “production,” to emphasize the difference between them.
4. Integrate Cloud Services for Observability
Observability is critical to understanding the impact of infrastructure changes. Use cloud-native monitoring services like AWS CloudWatch, Azure Monitor, or Google Cloud Operations to integrate logging and monitoring into your pipelines. This way, infrastructure performance can be analyzed alongside application performance.
In your pipeline, you can include steps to configure metrics and alarms after deploying infrastructure. For example, after deploying an EC2 instance, you might automatically configure a CloudWatch Alarm to monitor CPU usage.
Example AWS CloudWatch Alarm Creation:
resource "aws_cloudwatch_metric_alarm" "high_cpu" {
alarm_name = "highCPU"
comparison_operator = "GreaterThanThreshold"
evaluation_periods = "2"
metric_name = "CPUUtilization"
namespace = "AWS/EC2"
period = "120"
statistic = "Average"
threshold = "80"
actions_enabled = true
alarm_actions = ["arn:aws:sns:us-east-1:123456789012:notify_me"]
}
Screenshot idea: A screenshot showing AWS CloudWatch monitoring metrics for newly deployed infrastructure.
5. Use Rollbacks and Blue-Green Deployments for Safety
One key principle for managing infrastructure changes is the ability to rollback quickly. If your infrastructure changes cause issues, rollbacks should be as simple as reverting a commit and running the pipeline again.
Blue-Green Deployments are a strategy where you maintain two production environments (blue and green) and only switch to the new infrastructure once it’s fully tested. This ensures zero downtime.
Here’s a sample architecture for blue-green deployments:
- Blue: Current production infrastructure.
- Green: Identical infrastructure deployed as part of your pipeline.
- After testing, switch traffic to the green environment by updating a load balancer or DNS.
Screenshot idea: Visual diagram of how blue-green deployment works with traffic switching from the blue to green infrastructure.
6. Secure Your Infrastructure Deployments
Security is an important aspect of infrastructure deployment. Ensure that your pipeline is handling secrets (API keys, passwords, certificates) securely by integrating with secret management systems such as AWS Secrets Manager, Azure Key Vault, or HashiCorp Vault.
Avoid hardcoding sensitive information in configuration files. Instead, retrieve secrets securely as part of your deployment process:
Example in Terraform:
provider "aws" {
access_key = var.aws_access_key
secret_key = var.aws_secret_key
}
You can also configure your pipeline to scan IaC configurations for vulnerabilities, using tools like Checkov or TFSec.
Screenshot idea: Show a secure secret management flow in your CI/CD pipeline, pulling secrets from AWS Secrets Manager or HashiCorp Vault.
Conclusion
Integrating infrastructure deployments into your application CI/CD pipeline ensures consistency, scalability, and resilience across your environments. By using best practices like Infrastructure as Code (IaC), staging environments, monitoring, blue-green deployments, and security integration, you can confidently manage both application and infrastructure changes together.
Key Takeaways:
- Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for reliable and repeatable infrastructure management.
- Run separate pipelines for application and infrastructure.
- Implement staging environments for testing.
- Ensure observability by integrating cloud monitoring services.
- Use blue-green deployments or rollbacks for safety.
- Secure your deployments by using secrets management.
By following these approaches, you’ll ensure smooth and efficient infrastructure deployments that complement your application pipeline, enabling faster delivery and fewer errors.
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