How AI-Powered Infrastructure as Code Generator (AIaC) Can Boost Your DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering Teams Productivity?

AIaC stands for Artificial Intelligence Infrastructure as Code, a new approach to automate the generation of IaC templates, configurations, utilities, queries, and more using OpenAI's API. In this article, I will introduce you to the concept of AIaC and how it works, show some use cases and examples, and guide you through the usage of AIaC by FireFly.

What is IaC and why do you need it?

Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is a DevOps methodology that uses a descriptive model to define and deploy infrastructure, such as networks, virtual machines, load balancers, and connection topologies. Just as the same source code always generates the same binary, an IaC model generates the same environment every time it is applied.
IaC has many benefits for DevOps teams, such as:

• Consistency: You can ensure that your infrastructure is always in the desired state and avoid configuration drifts or human errors.
• Reusability: You can reuse the same code for different environments or projects, saving time and resources.
• Scalability: You can easily scale up or down your infrastructure as needed, without manual intervention or downtime.
• Auditability: You can track and monitor changes to your infrastructure using version control and logging tools.
• Collaboration: You can share and review your code with other developers, improving quality and security.

What is AIaC and how does it work?

AIaC is a new paradigm that uses artificial intelligence to generate IaC code based on natural language queries. Instead of writing code from scratch or using templates, you can simply ask the AI model to generate code for different scenarios, such as "get terraform for AWS EC2" or "get k8s manifest for a mongodb deployment".
One of the models available in the API is ChatGPT, which is trained on chat conversations and can generate natural and engaging responses. By default, AIaC uses ChatGPT as the engine, but you can also use other models such as Davinci or Curie.

How to use AIaC?

AIaC by FireFly is an open-source project based on OpenAI, which allows users to generate code using natural language through the command line interface(CLI). The CLI allows you to ask the model to generate templates for different scenarios (e.g. "get terraform for AWS EC2"). It will make the request, and store the resulting code to a file, or simply print it to standard output.

You can get and use it from the AIaC project by FireFly on GitHub and get community support from their Slack community.
Note: You will need to provide an OpenAI API key in order for AIaC to work [Refer to OpenAI's pricing model for more information].

What are some use cases and examples of AIaC?

AIaC can be used for a variety of use cases and scenarios, such as:

• Generate IaC: You can use it to generate Infrastructure as Code (IaC) scripts or templates that can provision and configure cloud resources such as servers, networks, storage, etc. For example, a prompt could be "Create a Terraform script that deploys a web server and a database on AWS".
• Generate Configuration Files: You can use it to generate configuration files that can specify the settings and parameters of various applications, frameworks, or tools. For example, a prompt could be "Create a Dockerfile that builds an image with Python 3.9 and Flask".
• Generate CI/CD Pipelines: You can use it to generate Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines that can automate the testing, building, and deployment of code. For example, a prompt could be "Create a GitHub Actions workflow that runs unit tests and deploys the code to Heroku".
• Generate Policy as Code: You can use it to generate Policy as Code (PaC) scripts or templates that can enforce rules and compliance on cloud resources or code. For example, a prompt could be "Create a Sentinel policy that checks if the AWS instances have encryption enabled".
• Generate Utilities: You can use it to generate utility scripts or functions that can perform common or repetitive tasks such as data processing, logging, error handling, etc. For example, a prompt could be "Create a Python function that converts a CSV file to a JSON file".
• Command Line Builder: You can use it to generate command line arguments or options that can execute various commands or programs. For example, a prompt could be "Create a curl command that sends a POST request with JSON data to an API endpoint".
• Query Builder: You can use it to generate queries or statements that can retrieve or manipulate data from various sources such as databases, APIs, etc. For example, a prompt could be "Create an SQL query that selects the name and email of the customers who have spent more than $1000 in the last month".

Conclusion

AIaC can generate a wide range of IaC code, including CloudFormation, Terraform, Pulumi, Helm Chart, and Dockerfiles. In addition, AIaC can generate CI/CD pipelines and workflows configuration and even Shell Scripts. This makes it an incredibly versatile and powerful tool for DevOps, SRE, and Platform Engineering teams.