Why I Don't Deploy Infrastructure Manually Anymore

I admit it. There was a time, very recently, when I deployed infrastructure by going into the Azure portal and clicking some buttons. It seems so easy! But there's an associated cost. So much so that I just finished defined and deployed a new Azure Kubernetes Service cluster with Terraform. Why? Because I want to know what I have deployed. I want to know the details and to be able to easily read through it. It leaves no questions about what is deployed and how it has changed over time. And if I happen to delete my infrastructure in favor of something else, only to ultimately return to my original strategy, then it's there – I still have it sitting in a repo where I can deploy it!

It's a huge shift. There's no denying that. It feels like it takes a lot of time and effort when you first get started. But if you make the switch and give yourself some space to figure it out, you will find that it has significant payoffs in the end. My recommendation? Terraform: https://www.terraform.io/