#227 - Infrastructure as Code: Delivering Dynamic Systems for the Cloud Age - Kief Morris - Tech Lead Journal

How has Infrastructure as Code changed in the last five years? Explore the key shifts and how to align your infrastructure to real business value.

In this episode, Kief Morris, a Distinguished Infrastructure Engineer at Thoughtworks, returns to discuss the third edition of his book “Infrastructure as Code.” He shares fresh insights on designing and delivering dynamic systems for today’s cloud-driven world. Kief explores the evolution of IaC, practical methods for modern teams, the next generation of tools, and lessons learned from the recent years. Learn how to align infrastructure with business needs and manage today’s growing infrastructure complexities.

Key topics discussed:

How “Infrastructure as Code” book has evolved across three editions
Why infrastructure decisions must align with business value
How IaC and the toolchain have evolved over the last few years
Handling the growing complexity of modern infrastructure
The rise of platform engineering and internal developer platforms
Terraform vs. OpenTofu: which one should you use?
Balancing governance, speed, and innovation in the cloud era
The current limitations and role of AI in managing infrastructure

Timestamps:

(00:00) Trailer & Intro
(02:39) Updates in the Last Five Years
(04:13) Infrastructure as Code Definition
(05:58) The Practice of Infrastructure as Code
(06:32) The Differences Between the Book Editions
(10:21) Aligning Infrastructure to the Business Value
(15:03) Handling the Growing Infrastructure Complexities
(19:10) The Tools and New Inventions in IAC
(24:11) Terraform vs OpenTofu
(27:38) Orchestrating Infrastructure Changes Using IAC
(30:35) Platform Engineering
(33:06) Internal Developer Platform Key Success Factor
(37:15) Key Considerations of Building Teams with Infrastructure Skills
(41:56) Infrastructure Compliance and Governance
(45:53) Using AI for Infrastructure as Code
(50:31) Using AI for Troubleshooting and Root Cause Analysis
(51:50) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom

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Kief Morris’s Bio
Kief Morris is the author of the O’Reilly book Infrastructure as Code, and is a Distinguished Infrastructure Engineer at Thoughtworks, based in London. He works with clients and project teams around the world to explore, shape, and share better ways of working with cloud and infrastructure architecture.

Kief started out as a developer and systems administrator in the dot-com boom days, then worked with a series of digital scaleups applying infrastructure automation before DevOps was a thing. He joined Thoughtworks in 2010 as the wider industry was discovering Infrastructure as Code, DevOps, and Cloud, which gave him the opportunity to bring what he had learned in the previous fifteen years to enterprise clients in many industries and many countries.

He wrote the book Infrastructure as Code (now on the third edition) to share these ideas with a wider audience, which has given him a platform to meet and learn from an ever-growing variety of people and organizations.

Follow Kief:

LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/kiefmorris
Twitter – x.com/kief
BlueSky – bsky.app/profile/kief.com
Personal Website – kief.com
Infra as Code Website – infrastructure-as-code.com
Infrastructure as Code – https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/infrastructure-as-code/9781098150341/

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