What term describes the practice of writing scripts to automatically trigger infrastructure changes?

The practice of writing scripts to automatically trigger infrastructure changes is best described as Infrastructure as Code (IaC). This approach allows developers to manage and provision computing infrastructure through machine-readable definition files, rather than through physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools.

Infrastructure as Code enables version control for infrastructure, which fosters collaboration and consistency. This practice aligns with agile methodologies by facilitating automated testing and deployment of infrastructure setups, making it easy to replicate environments and manage changes over time. It also integrates seamlessly with continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines, enhancing the overall deployment process.

The other terms, while related to infrastructure management, do not specifically encapsulate the concept of scripting configuration and managing infrastructure in a programmatic manner. Configuration management typically focuses more on maintaining the desired state of systems and applications rather than the automation aspect. Continuous integration revolves around the automation of code changes, particularly in application development, while cloud automation refers to broader automation practices within cloud computing environments, but does not specifically denote the scripted definition and managing of infrastructure as code does.