We’re going to make this one short and sweet. If you want to truly streamline your IT operations then there are fewer better and more efficient ways to do it than cloud automation. Period.
Managing modern day computing resources on cloud infrastructures offers great scalability which comes in a very responsive and fast manner. But with great scalability comes the [obvious] need of great efficiency.
So how to you achieve optimum efficiency? Easy, cloud automation.
Deploy and repeat = scalability
As a result of the scalability you can get over one or multiple clouds, you can repeat many deployments again and again. Irrespective of whether you need to do this for the sake of security or business requirements. This is a fact for those working on the cloud and can lead to operating a large fleet of similar or varying servers.
When automation is applied for cloud management in such environments, you can truly achieve the maximum efficiency you need. Not only that, but you also maintain the required control over the sequence of actions. It sounds too good to be true, but it isn’t.
Cloud Automation advantages
Alright then, let’s have a brief, top line look at the useful treats you get with cloud automation:
– Quick provisioning and IT management
– Central inventory of allocated resources
– Minimize human error factor
– Enforce security policy
– Deployments’ accurate blueprint
Our approach
At Stackmasters we go with Ansible automation for its simple approach. Let’s face it. Unless you are enjoy placing obstacles in front of your efforts to achieve efficiency, then you want to remove as much complexity as possible in managing your IT infrastructure. And “keeping it simple” is something at the core of our strategy.
The rationale, as well as the results, speaks for itself. Using simple tools to manage complex systems can be an excellent solution, independent of the size of the organization. Ansible supports cloud infrastructures from OpenStack and AWS, to GCP and Azure with native modules. This means that virtually every platform is covered so that any type of business out there can benefit from its use.
Ansible benefits
As well as the general advantages of cloud automation points made earlier, there are many other significant benefits of using Ansible for cloud management. One of the most important benefits is its idempotent attribute, which allows for expressing the desired state of provisioned resources. Another major benefit is that Ansible automation can be used to orchestrate multiple resources. As well as for configuration management over the services setup on the server level.
After having worked with different environments for our customers, we find extra value in automating with Ansible for cloud migrations and implementing multi-cloud strategies. This alone is something that can make the difference when you consider how to respond to growing user demand. Moreover, it is also vital if you simply want to apply business decisions without the burden of being bound to a single cloud provider.
Epilogue
As we have discussed, cloud automation in the modern IT environment occurs at several different levels of the stack. And we can see only benefits from the increasing amount of automation which is possible. After all, as you scale and have more repeatable tasks, you need to be able to automate to achieve optimum efficiency.
Within the concept of cloud automation, or data center automation, and orchestration there are several important layers all working together. While we have not yet quite reached the point where we have a truly, fully automated cloud environment, we’re getting closer all the time. And that can only be good news for streamlined, efficient IT operations.
Don’t forget, if you need help or advice deciding how to automate elements of your IT infrastructure, reach out to us! We can help you standardize and automate the provisioning, maintenance and lifecycle management of your stack. Both at infrastructure as well as at software platform level.