Infrastructure-as-Code refers to the practice of defining and provisioning cloud resources using code and automation scripts, thus eliminating the need for manual configurations. With frameworks like AWS CloudFormation, AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit), AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM), Pulumi, and Terraform, users can specify their desired infrastructure state in code, enabling rapid and consistent deployment of resources.However, as with any code, IaC scripts require thorough testing to ensure their correctness and proper functionality. Traditional cloud environments for testing can be expensive, slow, and error-prone due to complexities in provisioning and configuration. With LocalStack, you can leverage a local emulation of various cloud services, such as S3, DynamoDB, EKS, and more!LocalStack simulates these cloud services on a developer's machine, allowing for comprehensive and efficient testing of IaC scripts before deployment to actual cloud environments. In this video, we explain how you can use LocalStack to be more efficient and cost-effective at testing these major IaC frameworks:• Terraform• Pulumi• Cloud Development Kit• CloudFormation• Serverless Application ModelAs organizations will continue to embrace IaC, cloud emulation framework like LocalStack will play an increasingly vital role in ensuring the quality and robustness of cloud infrastructure implementations.

Running AI/ML workloads in the cloud can be expensive, opaque, and difficult to iterate on. LocalStack changes this by enabling engineers to develop and test AI-powered cloud applications entirely locally, emulating services like SageMaker, Bedrock, Redshift, and Snowflake.In this presentation, Waldemar Hummer, CTO of LocalStack, demonstrates how to prototype and validate AI & ML data pipelines safely and cost-effectively using LocalStack’s cloud emulators. You’ll see how to emulate complex AI workflows, test integrations, and use “vibe coding” techniques confidently in a fully sandboxed local environment.

Get started with LocalStack in minutes! In this episode, we’ll clone a ready-to-go AWS sample app, spin up LocalStack, and run everything locally without a cloud account. By the end, you’ll have a fully functional event-driven app running on your machine.📖 Want more?Check out the companion blog post for a deeper breakdown of the architecture, project structure, and all the commands you’ll need to run it yourself.🔗 https://blog.localstack.cloud/why-i-run-my-serverless-apps-locally/

This is where it all comes together.CI/CD lets dev teams ship code automatically — but only if your pipeline is built to handle the cloud.In this episode, I show you how local testing + automated deployment = cloud apps that ship faster, safer, and smarter.Stick around to the end, this is the final episode of WTH is the Cloud?!