Glossary
Also: IaC · Terraform
Infrastructure is described as versioned code instead of being clicked together in a web console.
The gain is traceability: every change to the environment has an author, a timestamp and a reason in the history. And it can be repeated identically in a second environment.
The second gain shows up on the bad day. An environment that comes from code can be rebuilt. A clicked one has to be reconstructed, and only the person who built it can do that.
How you notice it
Frequently asked
Area by area and with import rather than recreation. Terraform can adopt existing resources so the code describes the current state without building anything new. Start with networking and permissions, because that is where recovery takes longest.