Learn how to monitor infrastructure deployed with IaC. Track changes, costs, and compliance.

Infrastructure Monitoring: Observability for IaC

Monitoring infrastructure ensures reliability and compliance. This guide covers monitoring strategies.

Terraform Cloud #

hcl.hcl

# terraform.tf
terraform {
  cloud {
    organization = "myorg"
    workspaces {
      name = "production"
    }
  }
}

Cost Monitoring #

bash.bash

# Infracost
infracost breakdown --path terraform/

# Terraform cost estimation
terraform plan -out=tfplan
infracost breakdown --path tfplan

Drift Detection #

bash.bash

# Detect configuration drift
terraform plan -detailed-exitcode

# Exit codes:
# 0 = No changes
# 1 = Error
# 2 = Changes detected

Compliance Checking #

bash.bash

# Checkov for compliance
checkov -d terraform/ --framework terraform

# OPA policies
opa test terraform/

Best Practices #

Monitor infrastructure changes
Track costs
Detect drift regularly
Enforce compliance
Alert on anomalies

Conclusion #

Monitor infrastructure by tracking changes, costs, and compliance. Use Terraform Cloud, Infracost, and Checkov.

For Infrastructure Monitoring: Observability for IaC, define pre-deploy checks, rollout gates, and rollback triggers before release. Track p95 latency, error rate, and cost per request for at least 24 hours after deployment. If the trend regresses from baseline, revert quickly and document the decision in the runbook.

Keep the operating model simple under pressure: one owner per change, one decision channel, and clear stop conditions. Review alert quality regularly to remove noise and ensure on-call engineers can distinguish urgent failures from routine variance.

Repeatability is the goal. Convert successful interventions into standard operating procedures and version them in the repository so future responders can execute the same flow without ambiguity.