The past few years have seen remarkable growth in usage of the public cloud by businesspeople. Everyone nowadays prefers to have their data on the cloud as it is easily scalable, and one does not have to make any investment in the infrastructure. And due to such rapid adaptation of cloud technology, the automation of infrastructure has become another budding requirement. As this automated infrastructure makes the work quite easier and fast as well. AWS is one of the cloud-based tools available for developers but not everybody is well versed with it, so the companies hire aws developers.
Many companies prefer to have cloud infrastructure automation technology to use the existing infrastructure in the best way and ensure that the configuration is available and accessible whenever required. Overall Amazon AWS web development services reduce downtime and boost up the performance. The owners are able to take the right business decisions and help them to make a profit.
BEST CLOUD INFRASTRUCTURE AUTOMATION TOOLS:
Whatever be the cloud one is using, be it private cloud, public cloud, or hybrid cloud, infrastructure automation tools makes the work easier. Below mentioned are the details of some of the best automation tools:
ANSIBLE
It is one of the simplest automation engines which automates the below three tasks:
a) Deployment of Application- Internally developed applications are easily and automatically deployed to the existing production systems
b) Cloud provisioning sets up the various servers one needs in the infrastructure.
c)Managing the configuration- The different configuration tasks may include implementation of a security policy, installing or updating applications, switching the configuration of an application, storage devices, OS, Networks, Firewalls etc.
One of the best features of this tool is that one does not need to specify that one wants a system in what state, it will automatically do it.
AWS CLOUD FORMATION
This tool helps to set the provisions for Amazon Web Services as well as third-party resources and then manage them throughout their life cycles. This saves the time of managing those resources and one can focus more on the functioning of the services. Here, one does not need to create and configure the AWS resources and look for what depends on what, AWS Cloud Formation handles it itself. Some of the Key Features are given below:
a) The automation improves as the simple template allows the user to declare what resources they want and how they should look. This decreases the dependency on the scripting tools to develop the resources.
b) The templates are quite easy to read like if someone is working on the web application then they might have used JSON or yaml at some point as these are widely used and they make it easier to understand.
c) The template helps to create a number of stacks in a short period of time and without affecting the other existing resources, one can quickly and easily replicate the infrastructure.
d) The consistency of the infrastructure is well maintained as the stacks are identical which are created by the template.
CHEF
It is one of the re-known and the oldest automation tools which scales easily and can manage multiple servers at a time, be it 5 or 5000. The three core engines of Chef are -Chef InSpec, Chef Habitat, Chef Infrastructure. Chef converts infrastructure to code which facilitates the cloud engineers and dedicated developers to automate the entire process of building, deploying, and managing the infrastructure. Some of the key features of the tool is given below:
a) It can automatically detect and rectify the security issues if any.
b) Easy dashboards for managing the infrastructure, auditing, and troubleshooting.
c)Reusable definitions are employed to automate the respective tasks.
d)Testing the code in a local place or isolated environment before deployment.
e) Have an option to either define our own resources or use the pre-defined resources.
CLOUDIFY
It is one of the best tools which provides the provision to manage the complete lifecycle of the application through single pane and by using hybrid infrastructure. It regularly monitors the changes in the application and scales them as per requirement. Some of the key features are mentioned below:
a) Workflows are event-driven
b) Integration with the leading infrastructure, tools, and clouds
c)Containerized and non-containerized workloads are supported by Cloud Native
d)Intelligent auto-scaling and auto-healing
PUPPET
It is one of the tools which is available in both, commercial as well as open-source form. It is used by biggest firms like Intel, Salesforce, Gettyimages, Sony, Uber etc. The language used here is very simple which makes it very easy to define the look in which we want our applications and infrastructure to look alike. Puppet is not a pure programming language and uses a model-based and declarative approach to automate the IT functions. Some of the key features of the Puppet is mentioned below:
a) The changes made in the applications and infrastructure along with its visibility and control is easily manageable.
b) The user has an option to either select from the available modules or write their own free code.
c)It supports the backup and operations to restore the data.
d)Puppet Enterprise web console can be used by the admins to manage the node requests, view total inventory data, packaging or assign Puppet classes.
e) The changes in the configurations as rolled out by the organizations can control several types of jobs using Puppet orchestrator.
SaltStack
It is one of the renowned infrastructure automation tools which provides a very versatile communication channel for orchestration, to manage configuration and execution at remote places. Since 2011, the year in which it was launched, it is one of the fastest growing infrastructure automation tools. It provides IT management with software which is easy to use and understand. Some of the key features are mentioned below:
a) Regular integration and deployment of code
b) Regular scrutiny of the security policies
c)Can function without an agent or may be with a resilient agent.
d)Orchestration at multi-cloud level
Appcore
It is one of the widely used and the simplest infrastructure automation tools which facilitates the following-
1)Configuration of cloud infrastructure
2)Automated provisioning
3)Managing the available resources
Some of the key features are mentioned below:
a) The simplest of interface to ensure the clear-cut understanding of the cloud technology
b) Provides two types of data- telemetry and event based for both, physical and virtual devices
CONCLUSION:
The above points explains that there are different types of infrastructure automation tools available in the market. Above mentioned are just few of them, other than these there are- Automate, Bcfg2, BladeLogic Server Automation, CA technologies Automation and many more. Thus, one should select as per the requirement of the business and their infrastructure only to get the best results. Thus, it all depends on making the right choice for your organization.