Cloud automation is a collection of processes, best practices, and technologies that help engineers save time and effort while configuring, administering, and optimising cloud resources and services. Cloud automation aims to speed the supply of cloud infrastructure resources in response to customer demand. Manually scaling, provisioning, and configuring cloud resources frequently lead to errors that might impact availability or performance. Solution? Automation in the cloud. Continue reading this blog post to learn about the most influential cloud automation use cases in the tech industry, as well as the key features of modern cloud automation technologies.
Cloud automation streamlines resource management by removing repetitive operations such as virtual machine configuration, cluster creation, and availability and performance management. It reduces the unpredictability and complexity of infrastructure and technology stack by eliminating errors and security vulnerabilities. Manual deployment might cause problems and reduce workload availability. Infrastructure as Code (IaC), tight feedback loops, and continuous delivery are all required for DevOps, and all rely on cloud automation. Orchestration and cloud automation solutions that run on top of the virtualized environment are used by teams to achieve cloud automation.
Cloud automation has various advantages, including lower cloud costs, continuous deployment, making the most of cloud infrastructure, improving security and resilience, enhancing backup processes, and advancing governance. Teams can accelerate processes and reduce errors by decreasing human work in managing cloud-based operations, freeing up time and resources for innovation. The process of automating the application deployment pipeline allows for more frequent updates. Cloud automation technologies assist teams in making optimal use of cloud infrastructure by automating storage, backups, security, compliance management, configuration changes, and code deployment. By incorporating security best practices into automated workflows, security principles are reinforced across all deployments. Automating system backups in the cloud or automatically backing up on-premises systems to a cloud-based environment also improves resilience. Cloud automation also offers a centralised view of infrastructure, allowing for greater control over resources throughout the organisation.
Cloud automation and orchestration are critical components in developing a successful cloud strategy. Cloud automation entails employing cloud management tools to complete operations that would otherwise need manual labour, such as provisioning servers, backing up data, or reducing redundant processes. Cloud orchestration, on the other hand, organises automated tasks in the cloud architecture to achieve goals, bringing low-level tasks together to establish processes and coordinating them across various systems or locations. While automation can function without orchestration, integrating the two produces the best outcomes. Understanding the distinction between these two strategies is critical for developing an effective cloud strategy.
Cloud automation enables companies to automate operations like auto-provisioning cloud services, decreasing waste, and lowering costs. It can use an instance selection algorithm to automate the process of selecting the optimal VMs for a job. This approach can automatically assign the optimal instance types to fit the application’s needs, assuring maximum performance at the lowest possible cost. Furthermore, cloud automation technologies can help to reduce cloud sprawl by shutting down idle instances and activities, hence lowering expenses. Many teams have orphaned instances or improperly accounted for cloud resources, which can result in large cloud expenditures. Cloud automation can help to speed up the process of recognising and resolving these issues before they become costly. Overall, cloud automation can assist companies in optimising cloud resources and lowering expenses.
Cloud automation enables the construction of Infrastructure as Code (IaC), in which IT infrastructure is described in configuration files and automatically started. Version control, management, testing, and creation of these configuration files are all part of the process. Cloud automation processes can use resource pools to draw from, define common configuration items, load application components and services, and combine them to create a better operational environment. A cloud automation template, for example, can create containers, load components, configure virtual networks, create load balancers, and expose workloads to users.
Cloud automation, in addition to IaC, improves application development and testing by delivering automatically provisioned dev/test environments as part of automated development pipelines. Modern development processes necessitate rapid resource deployment and scaling to test new releases and make them public. Hybrid cloud solutions necessitate meticulous integration of on-premises and public cloud services. Cloud automation solutions can assist in the synchronisation of assets between local data centres and cloud resources, allowing for “cloud bursting” when application loads exceed local resources. This also allows for disaster recovery scenarios, with remote locations replicating on-premises environments.
Kubernetes is a cloud automation solution for managing and orchestrating containers, enabling users to run any workload in the cloud. While it does not automate all cloud resources, it is a start in the right direction.
Cloud automation saves time and effort while also being faster, more scalable, and more secure, allowing for predictable and dependable workflows. Effective automation is predicted to be a force multiplier for organisations as an emerging technology. Are you automating the provisioning, management, and scaling of cloud resources?
