Cloud infrastructure automation refers to the use of technology to provision servers and manage data centers through metadata files, rather than manually configuring physical hardware. This approach is often known as implementing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) or enabling continuous configuration automation. With this method, developers create reusable, templated infrastructure to deploy, review, and integrate their application code. These templates can be automatically generated and reused, reducing the need for repetitive manual configuration and saving time. Organizations commonly adopt cloud infrastructure automation within their DevOps practices to streamline deployments, maintain visibility into configurations, and reduce human error. These tools help minimize downtime and improve operational efficiency by automating the setup and management of cloud environments. This technology is closely tied to the continuous delivery (CD) process. While many DevOps-centric configuration management tools include capabilities for cloud infrastructure automation, not all of them do—so it's important to evaluate toolsets based on specific automation needs.