AWS Technical Essentials Practice

A major advantage of using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) is that it reduces manual configuration and makes deployments more consistent.

This approach allows developers and operations teams to define and provision infrastructure through code rather than through manual processes. By treating infrastructure in a programmatic way, it ensures that environments can be replicated consistently across development, testing, and production stages. This standardization diminishes the risk of human error often found in manual setups, where configurations might differ from one deployment to another.

Moreover, IaC tools enable version control of infrastructure setups, which means changes can be tracked and managed effectively, just like application code. This leads to improved collaboration among team members and a more reliable deployment process overall.

The other options do not accurately reflect the nature of Infrastructure as Code; for example, it does not eliminate the need for cloud services, as IaC often works alongside them. It's also not limited to just testing purposes, as IaC is widely utilized for managing production environments too. Finally, while some familiarity with programming concepts can be helpful, advanced programming skills are not strictly required to leverage IaC tools effectively.