Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
The practice of managing and provisioning computing infrastructure through machine-readable configuration files rather than manual processes, enabling version control, repeatability, and automation.
Infrastructure as Code treats servers, networks, load balancers, and other infrastructure resources as software. Instead of clicking through cloud consoles, you define your infrastructure in declarative configuration files that can be version-controlled, reviewed, and applied automatically. Tools like Terraform, Pulumi, AWS CloudFormation, and Ansible are the primary IaC platforms.
The benefits are significant. Every infrastructure change goes through the same code review process as application code. Environments can be reproduced identically, eliminating configuration drift between staging and production. Disaster recovery becomes straightforward because the entire infrastructure can be recreated from code.
For AI teams, IaC is critical for managing the complex infrastructure that ML systems require: GPU clusters, model serving endpoints, vector databases, data pipelines, and monitoring stacks. Without IaC, spinning up a new environment for model training or creating a staging replica for testing becomes a manual, error-prone process that slows down experimentation velocity.
Related Terms
A/B Testing
A controlled experiment comparing two or more variants to determine which performs better on a defined metric, using statistical methods to ensure reliable results.
Feature Flag
A software mechanism that enables or disables features at runtime without deploying new code, used for gradual rollouts, A/B testing, and targeting specific user segments.
MLOps
The set of practices combining machine learning, DevOps, and data engineering to reliably deploy, monitor, and maintain ML models in production.
Model Serving
The infrastructure and systems that host trained ML models and handle inference requests in production, optimizing for latency, throughput, and cost.
Semantic Search
Search that understands the meaning and intent behind a query rather than just matching keywords, typically powered by embedding-based similarity comparison.
CI/CD (Continuous Integration / Continuous Deployment)
An automated software practice where code changes are continuously integrated into a shared repository, tested, and deployed to production, reducing manual intervention and accelerating delivery cycles.