Infrastructure as Code, 3rd Edition

Chapter 6. Infrastructure Components

A Note for Early Release Readers

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A key part of system design is grouping elements and defining relationships between those groups. We define these groupings as architectural units, or components, that we can use in diagrams and discussions. Components are how we implement a design. Some common components for software design include applications, microservices, libraries, and classes, which span different levels of a system. This chapter will describe components that we can use to discuss system designs with Infrastructure as Code.

Our industry does not have widely agreed definitions of what components are relevant for Infrastructure as Code, or what to call them. So for the purposes of this book, I’ve defined four types of components. These components are IaaS resources, code libraries, deployable infrastructure stacks (“stacks” for short), and infrastructure compositions. Each of these covers a different level of scope, usually ...