Config Management Camp 2024 Ghent

Let’s tackle some of the common challenges faced by users working with Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in cloud environments. We can start by looking at the difficulties everyone encounters, such as managing the complex and constantly changing services, integrating IaC with existing systems, and ensuring everything stays secure and within budget.
For beginners, the journey is even tougher. They have to learn IaC basics, get skilled with tools like AWS CloudFormation, Terraform, Pulumi, or CDK, and understand how to apply best practices in their work. This includes figuring out how to spot and fix problems in their IaC scripts and how to shift existing setups to IaC.
A big part of our focus is on the importance of testing. Making sure that the infrastructure works well with every new update and passes all the tests in CI pipelines is crucial. This brings us to the question, “Wouldn’t it be great to have a tool that makes all this easier?”
This is where LocalStack, an open-source tool designed to address these very challenges, comes in. LocalStack lets users emulate specific cloud services in a container, providing a safe space to test and try out new things. We'll discuss how it works with different IaC tools and pinpoint the advantages of such a practice.
We’ll wrap up with a demo showing how to use LocalStack to deploy a project both on a real cloud provider, AWS, and locally, highlighting how LocalStack simplifies the IaC feedback loops, making it easier, more secure, and cost-effective.