How DevOps is Changing IT Infrastructure Management

DevOps is changing IT infrastructure management by transforming it from a manual, slow, and siloed process into a fully automated, programmatic, and collaborative function that is deeply integrated into the software development lifecycle.

As of September 9, 2025, for modern IT organizations here in Pakistan and across the globe, the old way of managing servers is a relic of the past. The DevOps movement has introduced a set of principles and technologies that are making infrastructure management faster, more reliable, and more aligned with the speed of modern business.

1. The Rise of Infrastructure as Code (IaC)

This is the most fundamental and powerful change. In a DevOps model, IT infrastructure is not configured manually with a mouse and keyboard; it is defined and managed as code.

• The Old Way: A system administrator would manually log in to a server, install the necessary software, and configure all the settings. This process was slow, prone to human error, and difficult to replicate consistently.
• The DevOps Transformation: With Infrastructure as Code (IaC), the entire configuration of a server—its operating system, its network settings, the software to be installed—is defined in a text file using a tool like Terraform or Ansible. This code can then be version-controlled (in a system like Git), peer-reviewed, and automatically executed to build a perfect, consistent environment every single time.

2. From Manual Changes to Automated Pipelines

DevOps integrates this IaC approach directly into an automated Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipeline.

• The Old Way: To deploy a new application, a developer would “throw the code over the wall” to the operations team, who would then manually deploy it.
• The DevOps Transformation: The entire process is automated. When a developer commits new code, the CI/CD pipeline automatically:
  1. Builds the application.
  2. Runs automated tests.
  3. Uses the IaC scripts to provision the necessary cloud infrastructure.
  4. Deploys the application to that infrastructure. This allows for the rapid, reliable, and repeatable deployment of software and the underlying infrastructure it runs on, with minimal human intervention.

3. The Shift to Immutable Infrastructure

This is a powerful new concept enabled by IaC. The idea is that once a piece of infrastructure (like a server) is deployed, it is never changed or updated in place.

• The Old Way (“Mutable Infrastructure”): If a server needed a security patch, an administrator would log in and manually apply the patch, changing the server’s state. This could lead to “configuration drift,” where different servers in the same environment slowly become different from each other, causing inconsistencies and hard-to-diagnose problems.
• The DevOps Transformation (“Immutable Infrastructure”): In an immutable model, you do not patch a running server. Instead, you update the Infrastructure as Code file, use it to automatically build a brand new, fully patched server, and then simply destroy the old, outdated one. This ensures that every server in your environment is always in a known, consistent, and up-to-date state.

4. Breaking Down the Silos: The Cultural Change

Finally, DevOps is a cultural change. It breaks down the traditional wall between the “Dev” (development) and “Ops” (operations) teams.

• The Old Way: The two teams often had conflicting goals. Devs wanted to release new features quickly, while Ops wanted to maintain stability and avoid change. This created friction and slowed everything down.
• The DevOps Transformation: In a DevOps culture, Dev and Ops work together as a single, unified team with a shared responsibility for the entire lifecycle of an application, from coding to deployment and operation. This collaborative approach is the essential human element that makes the technological changes possible.