> Deploying instances from prebuilt AMIs takes a dozen or so lines of Terraform code. Terraform can spin up dozens of instances in less than 5 minutes with a dozen lines of code
That's ignoring everything that goes into even deciding the "nitty-gritty" around the deployment, which is where the bulk of the code comes from. What security keys does the customer use? Do we use ASGs or one-offs? Is the underlying application fault tolerant or not? Does the customer require backups? What subnet does it go in? What security groups need to be added? What are the tags? Is it region-specific? Does it belong in a higher security zone? Does it need specific failover criteria?
500 lines later, you can deploy one VM with everything needed to meet the customer and organizational demands. That's not efficient, but that's how enterprise technology ultimately works.
> Maybe for laggards it's true, but modern enterprises with modern ops teams using modern tooling are deploying most of everything with immutability in mind. Enterprise architecture is immutable by default now, and destroying and replacing is the norm.
So throwing insults isn't exactly helping here, because I'm literally coming from said modern ops teams, using said modern tooling, from a large enterprise. You can apply a universal standard to "all enterprise" all you want, but the cruel reality is that most Enterprise technology does not work in the way you are describing. ERP servers remain mutable, database clusters are mutable, Physical Security appliances are mutable, hypervisor ops appliances are mutable, VPN concentrators are - you guessed it - mutable. We have built the tooling to support immutable architecture, we have demonstrated its capabilities to the Enterprise, we are ready for Kubernetes and Containers both on-prem and in the cloud, but our customers and applications flatly do not use or support it.
This is something I have had to explain time and again to the Powers that Be (TM), that Enterprise Technology and Product Technology needs/pipelines/customers are vastly different, with different paces, needs, and operational goals. No amount of Terraform, Ansible, GitHub Actions, Argo Workflows, Puppet, or other pipeline add-ons are going to speed up Enterprise Technology, because the software providers do not care to do so. If your Enterprise application selection enables immutable architecture across the board, you are exceedingly lucky to have leaders who allow that to be the case, because in my experience - from small MSPs, to major publishers, to giant tech conglomerates, and everywhere in between - Enterprise Technology is mostly mutable infrastructure with old-but-custom software that will never, ever be modernized, and often with SLAs far superior than anything public customers are allowed to have.