EVALUATION OF THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE “INFRASTRUCTURE AS CODE” METHODOLOGY FOR CREATING AND MANAGING CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract

The article describes a comprehensive study of the effectiveness of using the Infrastructure as Code (IaC) methodology to create, scale, and manage cloud infrastructure. The IaC methodology is considered one of the key technologies of digital transformation and the DevOps approach, which provides software automation of infrastructure processes, reduces dependence on the human factor, and increases the repeatability and predictability of IT environments. The article provides a comparative analysis of leading IaC implementation tools, in particular Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CloudFormation, and Ansible, from the standpoint of their openness, compatibility with various cloud platforms, architectural approach (declarative or imperative), state management, and level of flexibility. The degree of automation, scalability, speed of infrastructure deployment, adaptability to change, configuration reliability, and ease of management are evaluated as key performance metrics. For each metric, a theoretical justification, analytical assessment, and comparison with traditional approaches to administration are provided. Special attention is paid to the analysis of IaC implementation in leading cloud environments (AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, OpenStack) taking into account the corresponding platform solutions (CloudFormation, ARM/Bicep, Deployment Manager, Heat) and third-party multi-cloud tools. It was found that the use of IaC significantly improves DevOps practices, simplifies CI/CD processes and increases the reliability of cloud solutions. As a result, it is proven that the use of IaC provides a significant increase in operational efficiency, reduces infrastructure maintenance costs and promotes its standardization, which makes this methodology strategically important for modern IT systems.