With Infrastructure as a Code IaaC, you can manage any infrastructure such as Network, Servers, Storage and Applications. There are many common IaC tools. Although you can use any combination of these tools to create similar solutions, these are strength in each tools and these are my preferences to achieve different goals.
Image Templates
You need image templates to create custom images of a Virtual Image or Container.
Then you will need software and dependencies installed on it. My weapon of Choice – Docker
Configuration Management
Ansible – the strength of this tool is that it is Idempotent. There is Ansible Playbook will which will check with repository. You can run the code multiple times and every time you run the code, it will only make changes to the difference and bring the code to defined state.
Provisioning Tools
Terraform – This Hashicorp tool supports almost every infrastructure and it can be set up on many platforms, AWS, VMware, Azure, you name it.
Cloud Formation – simply because it is AWS proprietary. If your job has alot to do with AWS, Cloud Formation is the way to go.
Teza