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Chapter 59: Infrastructure-as-Code

You've built, tested, and secured your agent on Minikube. Now it's time to go to production—real cloud infrastructure that serves real users. Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) treats infrastructure like software: version-controlled, reviewed, tested, and reproducible.

This chapter teaches Terraform fundamentals and applies them to provision Kubernetes clusters on cloud providers (DigitalOcean, Google Cloud, or Azure). By the end, you'll have a production-grade cluster running your agent, provisioned from code.

What You'll Learn​

By the end of this chapter, you'll be able to:

  • Understand IaC principles: Declarative infrastructure, state management, and drift detection
  • Write Terraform configurations: Providers, resources, variables, and outputs
  • Manage Terraform state: Remote backends, locking, and team collaboration
  • Use modules: Reusable infrastructure components
  • Provision cloud Kubernetes: DOKS (DigitalOcean), GKE (Google), or AKS (Azure)
  • Configure cluster add-ons: Ingress controllers, monitoring, and storage classes
  • Apply GitOps to infrastructure: Version-controlled infrastructure changes
  • Handle secrets in IaC: Sensitive values, encryption, and secret injection

Chapter Structure​

  1. Infrastructure-as-Code Concepts — Why IaC? Benefits and principles
  2. Terraform Fundamentals — Providers, resources, and the workflow
  3. Variables & Outputs — Parameterization and module interfaces
  4. State Management — Remote backends, locking, and workspaces
  5. Terraform Modules — Creating and using reusable components
  6. Provisioning Cloud Kubernetes — DOKS, GKE, or AKS cluster creation
  7. Cluster Configuration — Add-ons, node pools, and networking
  8. GitOps for Infrastructure — Pull requests, reviews, and automated applies
  9. Capstone: Production Cluster — Provision a cloud K8s cluster and deploy your agent

Prerequisites​

  • Chapters 49-58: Complete local agent deployment
  • Cloud provider account (DigitalOcean $200 credit, GCP $300 credit, or Azure $200 credit)
  • Terraform installed

Conclusion​

This chapter completes Part 7. You now have:

  • A containerized agent (Docker)
  • Orchestrated on Kubernetes (local and cloud)
  • Packaged with Helm
  • Event-driven with Kafka/Dapr
  • Automated with CI/CD and GitOps
  • Observable, secure, and governed
  • Provisioned from code

Your agent is a Digital FTE—a production product ready to serve customers 24/7.