The Evolution of Infrastructure Management
DevOps promised to bridge the gap between development and operations, aiming to deliver infrastructure faster and more efficiently. However, in many organizations, the reality often fell short of this ideal. DevOps frequently became a practice where operations teams learned to script infrastructure without fully embracing key software engineering principles. It became more about scripting than true engineering.
The Need for a Higher Abstraction
As infrastructure needs grew more complex, it became clear that traditional DevOps approaches were not scaling effectively. Tools like Terraform, while powerful, often proved to be terse and not particularly developer-friendly. They got the job done, but they weren’t providing the streamlined experience that developers needed. A new approach was necessary – one that would raise the level of abstraction and make infrastructure more accessible.
The Golden Path as a Product
Enter the concept of the “golden path” – a set of pre-built, standardized infrastructure solutions that developers can easily use and customize. This approach treats infrastructure as a product, designed with the end-user – the developer – in mind.
The golden path isn’t just a set of scripts or configurations; it’s a carefully crafted product that encapsulates best practices, security considerations, and organizational policies. It automates infrastructure creation while maintaining alignment with company standards, allowing developers to provision cloud resources without needing to worry about governance, security, or configuration inconsistencies.
Raising the Abstraction Level
To understand the significance of this shift, consider this analogy: Terraform, while powerful, is often like the assembly language of infrastructure. Platform engineering, and the golden path approach, is about raising that abstraction, creating reusable and maintainable infrastructure solutions that developers can work with seamlessly.
Just as high-level programming languages made software development more accessible and efficient compared to assembly language, the golden path aims to do the same for infrastructure management. By creating higher-level abstractions, we’re making infrastructure more understandable, manageable, and aligned with modern software development practices.
The Role of Full-Stack Platform Engineers
This new approach requires a new kind of professional: the full-stack platform engineer. These engineers think like developers while solving infrastructure challenges. They build scalable, reliable, and developer-friendly infrastructure that empowers teams.
Full-stack platform engineers focus on creating robust, scalable infrastructure solutions that directly support business needs, rather than getting bogged down in low-level configuration details. They apply the same rigor expected in software development to infrastructure design, treating infrastructure truly as code.
Enhancing Developer Experience and Security
The golden path approach significantly enhances the developer experience. By integrating infrastructure provisioning directly into familiar development workflows (like those in GitHub), it allows developers to request and manage infrastructure as part of their normal process, without delays or context switching.
This approach also allows for the seamless integration of security practices. By baking security considerations into the golden path from the start, organizations can shift security left in the development process, addressing vulnerabilities at their source without compromising developer productivity.
A New Era of Infrastructure Management
The rise of full-stack platform engineering and the golden path approach represents a significant evolution in how we think about and manage infrastructure. It’s not just DevOps 2.0; it’s a fundamental shift in mindset that treats infrastructure as a product designed for developer success.
By raising the abstraction level, applying software engineering principles to infrastructure, and focusing on creating reusable, maintainable solutions, this approach promises to make infrastructure more accessible, secure, and aligned with modern development practices. As organizations continue to grapple with increasing complexity, the golden path offers a way forward – empowering developers, enhancing security, and ultimately accelerating innovation.
At Carlsberg, this approach has been embodied in Gaia, our golden path platform built by full-stack platform engineers. Gaia exemplifies how treating infrastructure as a product can transform development processes, making them more efficient and developer-friendly. It stands as a testament to the power of full-stack platform engineering in creating solutions that truly serve the needs of modern development teams.
As more organizations embrace this shift, we can expect to see a new landscape of infrastructure management emerge – one where the golden path, crafted by skilled full-stack platform engineers, leads the way to more innovative, secure, and efficient software development practices.
