Infrastructure as Code, Patterns and Practices

6 Testing

This chapter covers

• Identifying which type of tests to write for infrastructure systems
• Writing tests to verify infrastructure configuration or modules
• Understanding the cost of various types of tests

Recall from chapter 1 that infrastructure as code involves an entire process to push a change to a system. You update scripts or configurations with infrastructure changes, push them to a version control system, and apply the changes in an automated way. However, you can use every module and dependency pattern from chapters 3 and 4 and still have failed changes! How do you catch a failed change before you apply it to production?

You can solve this problem by implementing tests for IaC. Testing is a process that evaluates whether a system ...