Great Lakes Software Symposium
June 10 - 12, 2022
Infrastructure as Real Code
Sunday - Jun 12 2:15 PM CDT - GALLERY
Modern software development often leverages services of public cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. Each vendor offers a robust set of web UIs and CLIs for infrastructure provisioning, but these are typically for one-off provisioning and don't allow for normal Software Development Lifecycle Processes like source control and code reviews.
This talk is a gentle introduction to Infrastructure as Real Code using an easy, but very capable, provider-agnostic tool called Pulumi.
Broadly speaking, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) solutions come in two categories. The first category uses a Declarative approach, typically using YAML or JSON. For AWS users, think CloudFormation. Also, approaches like Terraform, a very popular IaC toolchain from HashiCorp, offer a quasi-declarative approach with some richer dynamic capabilities. However, to a software developer, these all seem a bit foreign, using arcane, proprietary, and unfamiliar syntax and idioms.
Fortunately, the second category of IaC solutions uses an Imperative approach; i.e. real code like what developers are used to. To a development team, this can feel much more natural, fits into the normal SDLC processes, and offers many capabilities that will never be available from declarative IaC approaches.
This talk is a gentle introduction to Infrastructure as Real Code using an easy, but very capable, provider-agnostic toolchain called Pulumi.
In this talk, we will explore the following topics:
- A brief introduction to IaC
- Introduction to Pulumi concepts
- Provisioning our first set of resources on AWS
- Kubernetes is a Pulumi first-class citizen
- A brief look at some more advanced abstractions and automation patterns
You will leave this session armed with the basics of Infrastructure as Code with Pulumi, a few recipes to actually provision resources, and a much better appreciation for how your team can start building out infrastructure using real code.
Jack Frosch
Software Developer and Architect
About Jack Frosch
Jack Frosch has been developing software professionally for almost three decades and has seen many great, and horrible, projects. He enjoys sharing what he has learned with others in exchange for hearing their stories of victory and defeat.
Jack runs the St. Louis Serverless Meetup, now with more than 600 members, focusing on serverless application architectures and implementations. He is certified as an AWS Solutions Architect Associate and regularly talks on serverless and cloud-native architecture topics.
Software development is actually Jack's second career. His first was as an aviator flying civilian and military aircraft, including the venerable McDonnell-Douglas F-4 Phantom. Please don't ask him about this as that's all he'll talk about, often with his hands illustrating some mock dogfight he once engaged in. Like that time in Germany when he dropped through a hole in the clouds only to be jumped by two F-15 Eagles out of nearby Bitburg AB. There he was, new to the European theater… Told ya. Don't get him started.