Standardization

Established, time-tested processes. Increasing predictability, consistency, and best practice implementations.

Compliance

Can make it easy to comply to operational standards required by various organizations, such as DISA and PCI.

Faster to deploy

Just a couple minutes to install! Being able to deliver systems faster can even ease disaster recovery.

Fewer mistakes

Avoid installing into Logs when you meant to choose Log.

Fewer one-offs

Automation makes it so easy that no one is tempted to go around the process.

Time-saver

No need to retroubleshoot issues. Those problematic firewall settings are addressed right within your code.

Requires up-front consideration

Design it once and you’re set. Then installs are performed in a predefined, optimized way.

Source control

You can even keep your install configs in source control, leading to greater accountability and understanding of point-in-time decisions because the commit holds the documentation.

Higher-quality installs

Less temptation to do it poorly. It’ll be a thorough install instead of a minimum effort that works just for a single group.

Increased opportunities

When things are easier, there are more possibilities. Perhaps you want to create an environment where you throw away temporary virtual machines, similar to Docker.

Flexibility

Important if changes are required at short notice.

Less downtime

The process was thought out, so no SQL files ended up on the C drive. This means the drive is far less likely to fill up and go offline, leaving your customers happier with your work.

Higher satisfaction

Point-and-click installs are boring. Automated installs are thrilling.

On-demand installs

Because the process is automated, you can set up something like Jenkins or even a scheduled task to deploy instead of using the DBA’s time.

More secure

When systems and processes are standardized, updating becomes easier and more likely to occur.

Easier maintenance

Got something to change really quickly? Because systems are standardized and predictable, changing all of them at once is easy.