Infrastructure that only existed in the console

What should have happened

Infrastructure is described in code, and any environment can be rebuilt from the repository.

What actually happened

Network, cluster and edge had been created by hand, through the console. They worked, and nobody knew how to reproduce them. The decisions that explained why they looked that way lived in the memory of whoever had clicked.

What I did

Terraform in modules, with remote state and one workspace per environment. A guard rail compares the workspace with the environment in the variables file and makes the plan fail before any change, because applying production thinking it is staging is the mistake nobody makes twice. Architecture decisions were recorded as ADRs, with the reason and what was discarded.

What This Unlocked

• Infrastructure stopped being a fragile object. The worst case became an apply, not an archaeology dig.
• Decisions stopped depending on memory. The ADRs explain why each part is the way it is.
• Environment became a workspace with its own state, so touching staging no longer has any path to production.

What I Would Do Differently

I started with the cloud where the cluster lived, because that is where the moving parts were. I would do that again. What did not get finished was the rest: a second cloud stayed out and still is. And that is where the lesson lives. Infrastructure as code only pays when it covers everything that matters. While half of the estate is versioned and the other half stays in the console, the worst case has not been eliminated, only moved. Today I would size the program by the time that actually existed, instead of treating full coverage as a natural consequence of having started well.