Cloud automation involves the use of specialist software tools and procedures to simplify manual IT tasks. This relatively new technology empowers IT professionals to create and adapt resources, allowing organisations of all sizes to automate time consuming processes, boost productivity and achieve important business goals.
Cloud computing has become the business norm over recent years, offering a flexible, highly scalable solution that’s available on demand. But even though working in the cloud significantly streamlines common tasks, it still relies on human input and ideas. The manual work involved in identifying what cloud resources organisations need – and ensuring they work properly – is still huge, and requires a great deal of expert knowledge.
Cloud automation gives users the freedom to identify a vast range of different resources and organise them into different pools, effortlessly deploying tasks and tools regardless of physical space. From this pool of resources they can allocate different machines and devices, resulting in an Infrastructure-as-Code architecture that works in accordance with each individual organisation’s unique needs.
Your public cloud vendor (e.g. Azure, AWS etc) should be able to provide you with an extensive list of the tools available to you in your organisation’s cloud, which may be on a private platform or part of a bigger online space. The set up of all these tools and tasks can be time consuming, but with the right partner on board the results speak for themselves. Here are just a few of the benefits of cloud automation:
- Greater accuracy and security: Even the most experienced and business savvy people have bad days, and human error plays a huge role in data loss and security breaches. By automating common tasks, the risk of human error is rapidly decreased – saving valuable time, money and PR disasters.
- More robust backups: Most business users now understand the importance of regular data backups, especially with ransomware attacks on the rise. Automated backups on the cloud give organisations the peace of mind that their important data is easily retrievable, significantly improving resilience and confidence.
- Greater control: The old way of setting up systems and doing IT tasks on an “as and when” basis can mean administrators lack visibility and control. Cloud automation provides a centralised, highly visible solution with a far greater level of control, in turn improving governance and reporting.
Cloud Orchestration: The Next Level of Cloud Automation
If you think cloud automation sounds impressive, cloud orchestration is even more so. This involves the scheduling and integration of numerous automated tasks across multiple systems and platforms, allowing users not only to set up these tasks to happen automatically but also to ensure they work in perfect harmony with each other, and are scheduled to interact like clockwork. It also ensures connectivity by keeping different components communicating with each other, and boosts security by ensuring pre-set rules and permissions are being enforced.
Cloud Automation in Practice
Cloud automation can be used in lots of different ways, such as:
- Task management: all cloud providers offer a solution called autoscaling, which enables administrators to manage their workloads and monitor their virtual environments at a glance.
- Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Cloud automation takes the management of complex systems and software to an entirely new level, and IaC enables users to develop and manage their technology through software and code instead of having to configure separate bits of hardware.
- App Development: The design, development and testing of applications is a complex and time consuming process, and cloud automation can significantly reduce the time and costs involved.
- Hybrid Cloud Management: Hybrid clouds are a combination of private and public online environments that require a huge amount of planning and management. By using cloud automation, IT administrators are able to synchronize and monitor multiple systems, ensuring cost effective use of resources and keeping data secure and backed up.
Top Cloud Automation Tools
Cloud automation is a complex and multifaceted process that requires specific tools to ensure the accurate automation and orchestration of tasks. These are the most popular tools for cloud automation being used right now:
- Puppet: Released back in 2005, Puppet is one of the original cloud automation tools, with the enterprise version capable of supporting up to 20,000 different devices per organisation. It can be used for private, public and hybrid environments and comes with a graphical user interface (GUI) to simplify the configuration process.
- Ansible: Developed by Red Hat in 2012, this IaC configuration tool covers everything from resource management, to playbooks that automate complex scenarios. It’s most popular with public and private cloud environments.
- Kubernetes: While this isn’t officially a cloud automation tool, Kubernetes manages Docker containers which allow users to automate different workloads in the cloud. Released in 2014, it comes as standard with most public cloud providers.
- Elastic Beanstalk: This automation platform was released by AWS in 2011 and enables users to manage applications developed with Java, .NET, PHP, Node.js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker. Simply upload the code to the platform and Elastic Beanstalk will do the rest.
- AWS CloudFormation: Amazon’s own IaS platform, CloudFormation allows users to set out the different workflows they want to run, while Amazon brings all the necessary resources together. Released in 2011, it uses a selection of templates and has become a popular tool for the automation and management of different workplace tasks.
- Terraform: Released by Hashicorp in 2014, this popular open source tool enables users to develop, adapt and manage Infrastructure as Code. Instead of offering a standalone configuration solution, it was created to work in harmony with other tools such as Puppet.
Other popular cloud automation tools include Microsoft Azure Resource Manager, Azure Automation, Google Cloud Composer, IBM Cloud Orchestrator and Cloud Deployment Manager.
Cloud Automation: A Long Term Business Solution
Cloud automation offers a vast array of long term benefits which far outweigh the initial set-up costs. As soon as a particular process has been defined, it can be run automatically again and again, for as long as required, with little to no manual human intervention. This dramatically reduces in-house IT cost and frees up important time that can be better used elsewhere.
Cloud automation allows organisations to streamline different workflows and processes, which also means running regular updates and security checks – facilitating reliable quality control. Organisations that sign up to cloud automation services are also empowered to innovate and grow, as developers spend less time on repetitive admin duties and more on new ideas.
As cloud environments continue to get bigger and more complicated, automation tools play an important role in helping organisations keep their data safe and their businesses ahead of the game.
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