Matija Gašpar is the chief DevOps engineer at Raiffeisenbank Croatia (RBA). The 35-year-old from Zagreb joined the bank just under four years ago, after graduating from the Technical University of Zagreb and then working for several companies, mostly banks.
One of the main tasks he has been involved in – and is currently involved in – at RBA is the implementation of Infrastructure as a Code ( IaC). The larger the system, the more important its automation, recovery and consistency are. This is why IaC brings more advantages to larger systems like banks than to smaller work environments, explains Matija.
There are numerous advantages and improvements that we get stockholder database thanks to this kind of implementation, because IaC automates the creation and management of the infrastructure. Infrastructure configuration is defined in code and easily run using tools such as Terraform and Ansible .
Perhaps the most important advantage is the consistency and ability to easily restore and repeat infrastructure tasks . Namely, all code is stored in a version control system such as Git, from where it can be easily revised and run as needed.
It all depends on the size of the environment.
The process of migrating all RBA applications and tools to the new environment is still ongoing , but Matija estimates that a realistic timeframe for implementing IaC in a system like RBA is six months to a year. This includes setting up the code and environment, as well as migrating a certain number of applications, sometimes some of the time and resources are also spent on testing various solutions that could be useful.
Once the applications are proven to be working successfully on the new environment, the migration of the remaining ones begins. How long this will take depends on the size of your environment – which is, of course, larger when it comes to banks.
Five to eight people worked on the migration at RBA , each in charge of their technology and the migration of the components connected to them to the new environment. The number varied depending on the need for work at a given time for a particular segment.
For example, we need a network administrator for initial IP addresses, leaks, adjusting the load balancer, so in those moments his engagement is greater. Once he does that, his workload is reduced and he is there when needed.
Several external collaborators were also involved in the migration . This proved useful because – despite their knowledge of IaC and automation – Matija and his team had no direct experience with the migration process itself, or the best ways and tools to carry it out from start to finish. Involving people with the appropriate experience and knowledge certainly accelerated the entire process.
Challenges according to IaC
However, it was a challenging implementation in many respects. One of the more important ones, for example, was the need for team cooperation regarding the migration of a specific application .
Besides, the fact that an environment like the one at RBA consists of a large number of applications was not the biggest problem. The bigger challenge was that different applications work in different ways and have different requirements , tailored to their purpose and needs.
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