What is the IaC best practice for modifying an infrastructure stack in a public cloud?

Using a pull request and waiting for an approved merge is the best practice for modifying an infrastructure stack in a public cloud when utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC). This approach encourages a collaborative and controlled method of making changes to infrastructure, which is vital for maintaining consistency and reliability.

When changes are made through a pull request, they can be reviewed by team members, allowing for discussions on the proposed modifications and ensuring that best practices and organization policies are followed. This review process helps catch potential errors or oversights before they are applied to the live environment, reducing the risk of introducing problems.

Additionally, using version control systems in conjunction with IaC allows teams to track changes over time, revert to previous configurations if necessary, and maintain an auditable history of modifications. This fosters better collaboration among team members and enhances overall infrastructure management.

Other methods, such as directly editing the infrastructure via the console or making changes in the Terraform state file, can lead to discrepancies between the actual infrastructure and the IaC code, potentially resulting in configuration drift or state corruption. Manual SSH changes bypass the declarative nature of infrastructure management and can introduce unpredictability in the environment. Therefore, the pull request method stands out as the most professional and structured approach for managing infrastructure changes in a systematic