2.2.1. IaC Options & Tools for AWS

What happens when a critical infrastructure change needs to happen at 2 AM and the one engineer who understands the manual process is on vacation? Without IaC, the answer is "everyone panics." Infrastructure as Code eliminates tribal knowledge by making your entire environment reproducible from version-controlled templates. Think of IaC like a recipe — unlike a chef cooking from memory (manual provisioning), a recipe ensures anyone can reproduce the exact same result every time.

This section compares CloudFormation, CDK, SAM, and Terraform — each solves the same fundamental problem (declarative infrastructure) but with different trade-offs in abstraction level, language support, and ecosystem integration. Which tool fits your team's skills and your project's complexity?