Pulumi

Terraformterraform.io

The de facto IaC standard — declarative HCL and a provider ecosystem so broad you'll rarely hit something it can't provision.

Kuberneteskubernetes.io

Runs most of the internet's containers, but respect the learning curve — nobody accidentally becomes good at YAML manifests.

Ansibleansible.com

Agentless config management over plain SSH — playbooks read like English until you need a loop inside a loop.

Helmhelm.sh

The package manager Kubernetes never shipped with — turns sprawling YAML into charts you can actually version and roll back.