What practice helps prevent infrastructure drift on an ongoing basis?

What practice helps prevent infrastructure drift on an ongoing basis?

• A. Frequent reconciliation between IaC and actual infrastructure, drift detection, and reapplying IaC.
• B. Never run reconciliation to save time.
• C. Rely solely on manual changes.
• D. Drift is acceptable if there are no incidents.

Answer: (A)

Continuous alignment between what you declare in code and what actually runs is essential to prevent drift. Regular reconciliation compares the real infrastructure with the desired state defined by IaC, flags any differences, and re-applies the IaC to fix them. This creates an automated loop that keeps configurations consistent, enables reproducibility, and allows quick recovery if someone makes an unintended change. If you skip reconciliation, drift can accumulate unnoticed, making environments diverge from the code and harder to bring back in sync. Relying solely on manual changes undermines automation, auditability, and consistency, since ad hoc edits aren’t tracked or repeatable. Drift is not something to tolerate; addressing it proactively helps prevent incidents and maintains reliable, predictable infrastructure.

Continuous alignment between what you declare in code and what actually runs is essential to prevent drift. Regular reconciliation compares the real infrastructure with the desired state defined by IaC, flags any differences, and re-applies the IaC to fix them. This creates an automated loop that keeps configurations consistent, enables reproducibility, and allows quick recovery if someone makes an unintended change.

If you skip reconciliation, drift can accumulate unnoticed, making environments diverge from the code and harder to bring back in sync. Relying solely on manual changes undermines automation, auditability, and consistency, since ad hoc edits aren’t tracked or repeatable. Drift is not something to tolerate; addressing it proactively helps prevent incidents and maintains reliable, predictable infrastructure.