Infrastructure Testing

Infrastructure changes fail differently than application code — a syntactically valid Terraform plan can still delete a production database, and a Kubernetes manifest that passes schema validation can still deploy a container that can't reach anything it needs. "It applied without error" is not evidence of correctness; it's evidence the tool understood the syntax.

Most infrastructure testing gaps come from treating plan output as sufficient review, when a plan only tells you what will change, never whether that change is safe. Test infrastructure changes against the same rigor as application code — fast local checks first, real environments before production, no exceptions for "it's just config."

1. Build a testing pyramid sized for infrastructure

Application testing pyramids assume unit tests are cheap and environment tests are expensive; for infrastructure the same shape holds but the layers look different — a fast static check catches most mistakes, and a real environment is reserved for what nothing else can validate.