An Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Assessment is a comprehensive evaluation of an organization's use of IaC practices and tools (e.g. Terraform, AWS CloudFormation, Azure Bicep, or Google Cloud Deployment Manager), with a specific focus on assessing the efficiency, security, maintainability, and alignment of their infrastructure code with best practices and industry standards.
The Awarala assessment aims to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement in the IaC implementation, helping organizations enhance their infrastructure management processes and outcomes.
Key objectives of an IaC Assessment include:
Evaluating the clarity, structure, and organization of the IaC codebase. This includes assessing factors such as naming conventions, comments, code reuse, modularity, and adherence to coding standards.
Assessing the extent to which the IaC code is modular and can be reused across different projects and environments. Modular code promotes consistency, reduces duplication, and simplifies maintenance.
Reviewing how the organization manages version control for their IaC codebase. This includes analyzing branching strategies, commit practices, code reviews, and the process for tracking and managing changes.
Examining how the organization manages Terraform state files. This includes assessing state storage, access controls, state locking, and strategies for handling state files in a collaborative environment.
Assessing security practices related to the IaC codebase. This involves reviewing access controls, secrets management, encryption, and compliance with security standards and regulations.
Evaluating the presence and effectiveness of automated tests for the IaC code. This includes assessing unit tests, integration tests, and validation of infrastructure changes before deployment.
Reviewing the documentation associated with the IaC codebase. This includes documentation of design decisions, dependencies, deployment processes, and usage guidelines.
Assessing how the IaC code accounts for scalability and performance considerations. This includes evaluating resource provisioning, load balancing, and optimization strategies.
Analyzing collaboration practices among team members working on the IaC codebase. This includes code review processes, communication channels, and the integration of IaC into the overall development workflow.
Evaluating the organization's efforts to educate team members about IaC concepts, best practices, and tools. This includes assessing training materials, workshops, and knowledge sharing.
Reviewing how errors and issues in the IaC codebase are identified, diagnosed, and resolved. This includes the use of error handling mechanisms and debugging practices.
Based on the assessment findings, organizations can receive actionable recommendations for improving their IaC practices. These recommendations may include specific steps to enhance code quality, security, automation, collaboration, and overall efficiency in managing infrastructure deployments. An IaC Assessment helps organizations optimize their use of infrastructure as code, leading to more reliable, scalable, and agile infrastructure management processes.
