AI engineering glossary · MLOps, LLMOps cloud
What is configuration drift?
Configuration drift: The gradual divergence between what infrastructure code says should exist and what actually exists, usually caused by manual changes in a console. Drift causes surprises and outages, so teams detect it and reapply their declared setup.
Configuration drift: an example
Someone opens a firewall port by hand; a scheduled Terraform plan detects the difference and flags it.
Related terms
- Infrastructure as code
- Terraform state
- GitOps
- Immutable infrastructure
More MLOps, LLMOps cloud terms
- Container layer
- Container runtime
- Continuous delivery
- Continuous training
- Data versioning
- Dependency pinning
- Deployment pipeline
- Disaster recovery
Where you learn it
Configuration drift is part of the AI Engineering Program, which teaches it with notes, a hands-on lab and an exam. The first lesson is free.