DevOps and IaC go hand in hand. The practice of storing your infrastructure (traditionally the concern of Operations) as code (traditionally the concern of Development) encourages a sharing of responsibilities that facilitates collaboration.

By automating the PACKAGE, RELEASE, and CONFIGURE activities in the software development life cycle (as pictured), you increase the speed of your releases while also increasing confidence.

Cloud-based IaC encourages architecture for failure: as your resources are virtualized, you must plan for the chance of physical (host) hardware failure, however unlikely.

Being able to recreate your entire environment in minutes is the ultimate recovery solution.

Unlike physical hardware, you can easily simulate and test failure in your software architecture by deleting key components—they are all virtual anyway!