Optimizing IaC Pipelines

Even minor code modifications can have significant repercussions within the deployed environment. When multiple teams collaborate on shared solutions, rigorous validation of all changes is paramount to ensure the integrity and stability of the deployment environments.

CI/CD pipelines empower teams to perform comprehensive validation through automated code quality checks and testing.

What is Infrastructure as Code

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a process of provisioning and managing infrastructure using code instead of manual configuration.

Key aspects of IaC include declarative descriptions of resources, version control for infrastructure changes, and treating infrastructure as software with its own lifecycle.

What is CI/CD Pipeline

Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) encompasses the automated processes of testing, building, and deploying code modifications.

CI/CD empowers developers to confidently and rapidly deliver code changes to production.

IaC validation strategy in CI/CD pipeline

Linting

The integration of code linting and validation tools into IaC pipelines facilitates the early detection and resolution of code defects. Furthermore, the linting process serves as a mechanism to enforce organizational coding standards and best practices

Suggested tool: tflint

TFLint is a framework and each feature is provided by plugins, the key features are as follows: Find possible errors (like invalid instance types) for Major Cloud providers (AWS/Azure/GCP). Warn about deprecated syntax, unused declarations. Enforce best practices, naming conventions.

Secrets Scanning

Maintaining the security of our code is paramount, and a critical aspect of that security is the proper management and protection of secrets like API keys, keyfiles, passwords, and tokens. Accidentally committing these secrets to your code repository can have serious consequences

Suggested Tool: gitleaks

For further insights into Gitleaks, please refer to my other post

Compliance and Security:

Static Code Analysis enables the identification and assessment of vulnerabilities and security flaws within the codebase without requiring a runtime environment or exposing production systems to risk. This comprehensive testing approach facilitates exhaustive code examination.

Suggested tool: Checkov by Prisma Cloud

Terraform Plan & Apply

Before applying any Terraform changes, it is imperative to execute a terraform plan. This plan must undergo a dual review process (four-eyes principle) by two individuals before proceeding with terraform apply. This rigorous approach serves multiple purposes:

• Risk Mitigation: It enables a thorough review of the proposed changes, minimizing the risk of unintended or unexpected modifications that could potentially lead to errors, downtime, or security breaches.
• Configuration Validation: It ensures the validity and consistency of the configuration with the desired state, guaranteeing adherence to best practices and established conventions.
• Enhanced Collaboration: It fosters collaboration and transparency by facilitating the sharing of the plan with team members and stakeholders, ensuring collective approval before implementation.

Best Practice:

• Dedicated Service Accounts: Utilize dedicated service accounts for both terraform plan (read-only) and terraform apply (read-write) operations.
• Read-Only for Planning: Employ the read-only service account exclusively for creating the Terraform plan, mitigating the risk of misuse within the CI/CD pipeline.
• Approver Integration: Integrate approvers within the pipeline to restrict the usage of the privileged service account to designated individuals, ensuring secure and controlled access.

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