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This paragraph is completely confusing - What is Infrastructure here!

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#1

The configuration management tools helped spread the adoption of “infrastructure as code” principles. But the problem was they were designed with static infrastructure in mind. On the other hand, VMs opened the doors to dynamic infrastructure where VMs are continuously created and destroyed. Mutability and constant creation and destruction were clashing. Mutable infrastructure is well suited for static infrastructure. It does not respond well to challenges brought with dynamic nature of modern data centers. Mutability (changeable at runtime) had to give way to immutability (nothing can be tweaked at runtime).

What is infrastructure here? What is mutable and immutable? Can you give an example?

"Mutable infrastructure is well suited for static infrastructure."

  • This sentence is completely confusing

Best
Shabir

#2

You’re right. I assumed (wrongly) that people understand the difference between mutable and immutable infrastructure and that it is close to impossible to have it dynamic (e.g., auto-scaling of VMs) without immutable infrastructure (e.g., based on baked images that do not require any provisioning at runtime). I’ll do my best to write a text or create a video on that subject.