Infrastructure as Code, Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) open up the option to pursue what we call “single-as-multi-tenant” systems.A service that is multi-tenant from our client’s perspective but rolled out as isolated single tenant systems for each of their customers in compliance with their security and privacy policies. Show
Single Tenant applications can sometimes be known for their cumbersome maintenance, be more costly to host than Multi-Tenant systems, and not always maximize their infrastructure resource allocation. Three key pain points that cloud computing solves natively. The automated deployment (CI/CD) pipelines and auto-deploying infrastructure (IaC) we created for our SaaS client allow us the ability to spin up, correctly size, and provision new environments without excessive workloads and extended timeframes. While safeguarding data and privileged employee information, at the same time making the entire environment less vulnerable and highly available. There are a lot of acronyms thrown around here, and keeping track of these services along with understanding the relationship between DevOps, Infrastructure as Code, Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery can be confusing.In simple terms. Infrastructure as Code is a key practice of DevOps teams and integrates as part of the CI/CD pipeline. Or better put, when we run DevOps-as-a-Service for clients, we write Infrastructure as Code as one step in the process of setting up our CI/CD pipelines. When we started working with this SaaS company in the employee engagement space, their legacy infrastructure was hosted with a cloud service that only provided Virtual Machines, and no additional services to help optimize or right-size configurations. We knew immediately that by hosting with AWS we would be able to leverage AWS features and services to configure equivalent VPCs and run these same workloads cheaper, faster, and more securely. Our migration process onto Amazon Web Services adheres to AWS’ security best practices and the famous AWS Well-Architected Framework. Which establishes very high standards for operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, and cost optimization. Which would set us on a path to eventually create auto scaling groups and add in horizontal scalability to achieve significant performance gains. Last Updated on September 16, 2021 by Admin
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Infrastructure as Code solves an age-old problem: setting up and configuration IT resources was an arduous, manual, error-prone process. Today it is possible to define a configuration file, and spin up IT resources automatically, consistently and predictably, from that file. This can be extremely useful for DevOps processes, workload management, and other cloud automation use cases. Infrastructure as Code strategies on AWS are powered by the CloudFormation service, which lets you define simple text-based templates, and use them to spin up surprisingly complex cloud architectures. CloudFormation uses templates, configuration files defined in JSON or YAML syntax, that are human readable and can be easily edited, which you can use to define the resources you want to set up. CloudFormation reads a template and generates a stack, a set of resources ready to use on AWS.  Image Source: AWS By using CloudFormation, you can define complex multi-resource applications and automatically deploy the resources on AWS. You can test your Infrastructure as Code by fine-tuning your configuration and repeating the process. In this article, you will learn:
Benefits of IaC on AWSThe AWS approach to Infrastructure as Code has several advantages:
AWS CloudFormation: Basics of Infrastructure as Code on AWSCloudFormation allows you to define configuration for Infrastructure as Code, by directly editing template files, via the CloudFormation API, or the AWS CLI. CloudFormation is a free service—Amazon only charges for the services you provision via templates. The following diagram illustrates the CloudFormation process. You create templates and save them in an S3 bucket. Then CloudFormation reads the template and creates a stack based on template definitions. Managing template changes What happens when you need to change a template? CloudFormation recognizes that a template has been edited and creates a change set, which specifies what needs to be changed in the resources you have provisioned, to reflect the changes in the template. Once you approve the change set, it is executed, and the resources are automatically modified. CloudFormation template example Here is an example of a sample CloudFormation template provided by Amazon, which creates a publicly accessible Amazon S3 bucket, with external access, and a “retain on delete” deletion policy. This is the JSON syntax—you can also define templates using YAML.{ 5 Tips for Building IaC on Amazon with CloudFormation1. Use IAM to Control AccessAmazon Identity and Access Management (IAM) manages users and permissions in AWS. You’ll need to use IAM in conjunction with CloudFormation to define which operations CloudFormation is permitted to carry out. Before a user can deploy a stack with CloudFormation, that user should have permissions to all the relevant resources in the stack—for example, permission to create instances on EC2, or to create new S3 buckets. You can use a service role to avoid tying CloudFormation capabilities to the permissions of a specific user. You can define one or more service roles for CloudFormation, giving those roles permission to create, modify, and delete resources. Prefer a granular permission policy with several service roles for different types of stacks, rather than one “super admin” role that can represent a major security risk. 2. Verify account limits and budget for relevant resource types Check your AWS account limits for the resources that participate in your stack, and whether the limits prevent you from launching any part of the stack. There are also specific limits related to CloudFormation—you can launch only 200 CloudFormation stacks per region by default. If you defined budgets for your AWS account, you should also verify that the resources created by your stack do not exceed the budget for the relevant AWS account. 3. Reuse templates to replicate your stacksOnce you have built a template and tested to ensure it works well, reuse it to rebuild that infrastructure in other environments. For example, if you set up a working stack for your web application, you can reuse it to create dev, test, and production environments that all have the same components. When creating your template, keep in mind that the template should be reusable, and use parameters and conditions to generalize the template beyond the current, specific deployment scenario. 4. Use nested stacksA nested stack is a CloudFormation template that references another template, to reuse the same stack within another stack. You can use CloudFormation to create a set of “lego blocks” from which to assemble your infrastructure. For example, you can have a template for a load balancer configuration, a template for setting up an S3 bucket, and another for spinning up certain types of EC2 instances. Instead of explicitly declaring these resources in your templates, use your tested “lego block” templates. This also means you can maintain and update basic templates and apply the change to your entire infrastructure at once. 5. Validate and test your templates before useCloudFormation provides a validation engine that scans a template and helps you catch syntax and semantic errors. If your template passes validation, always run it in an isolated non-production environment and test it to ensure resources are running correctly, and there are no performance or security issues. When you reach a stable state, commit your template into source code, labelling it as a stable, tested version. Infrastructure as Code on AWS with Cloud Volumes ONTAPNetApp Cloud Volumes ONTAP, the leading enterprise-grade storage management solution, delivers secure, proven storage management services on AWS, Azure and Google Cloud. Cloud Volumes ONTAP supports up to a capacity of 368TB, and supports various use cases such as file services, databases, DevOps or any other enterprise workload. In particular, Cloud Volumes ONTAP provides Cloud Manager, a UI and APIs for management, automation and orchestration, supporting hybrid & multi-cloud architectures, and letting you treat pools of storage as one more element in your Infrastructure as Code AWS setup. Cloud Manager is completely API driven and is highly geared towards automating cloud operations. Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Cloud Manager deployment through infrastructure- as- code automation helps to address the DevOps challenges faced by organizations when it comes to configuring enterprise cloud storage solutions. When implementing infrastructure as code, Cloud Volumes ONTAP and Cloud Manager go hand in hand with Terraform to achieve the level of efficiency expected in large scale cloud storage deployments. Ansible is a powerful tool for automating the deployment of cloud resources. When integrated with AWS, it can help you manage your applications and services consistently and with
ease. Learn More About Infrastructure as Code on AWSAnsible & AWS: How to Automate Anything in AWS with Ansible Modules Ansible is a powerful tool for automating the deployment of cloud resources. When integrated with AWS, it can help you manage your applications and services consistently and with ease. This article explains how Ansible can improve your AWS management, how the two work together, and how to get started with Ansible playbooks for automation. Read more: Ansible & AWS: How to Automate Anything in AWS with Ansible Modules Terraform for EBS and EFS: Automating EBS Volumes and EFS File Shares with IaC Terraform is an infrastructure as code (IaC) solution you can use to define and manage your resources in AWS. You can use it with a variety of services, including both EBS and EFS, to automate provisioning and improve efficiency. This article explains the basics of how Terraform can combine with AWS, what AWS data sources are available, and provides two brief tutorials showing how to create resources in EBS and EFS. Read more: Terraform for EBS and EFS: Automating EBS Volumes and EFS File Shares with IaC Terraform & AWS Tutorial: How to Deploy a Terraform Enterprise Cluster on AWS Terraform is an infrastructure as code (IaC) tool that you can use to define, version, and manage your infrastructure. Terraform works on-premises or in the cloud, including with AWS, making it a valuable tool for flexible deployments. This article explains how Terraform can simplify resource deployment in AWS, how to deploy an enterprise grade cluster, and provides some tips for getting the most out of management with Terraform. Read more: Terraform & AWS Tutorial: How to Deploy a Terraform Enterprise Cluster on AWS See Additional Guides About Key DevOps TopicsWe have authored in-depth guides on several other topics that can also be useful as you explore the world of DevOps. Infrastructure as Code on AzureLearn how IaC works on Azure, and how to combine first-party services and resources with third-party tools like Terraform. See top articles in our IaC on Azure guide:
Cloud AutomationLearn about cloud automation techniques and tools, including IaC deployments with Ansible, OpenShift, and tips for DevOps pipelines. See top articles in our cloud automation guide
Which AWS service enables users to deploy infrastructure as code by automating the process?AWS CodeDeploy fully automates your software deployments, allowing you to deploy reliably and rapidly. You can consistently deploy your application across your development, test, and production environments whether deploying to Amazon EC2, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, or your on-premises servers.
What is infrastructure as code in AWS?Practicing infrastructure as code means applying the same rigor of application code development to infrastructure provisioning. All configurations should be defined in a declarative way and stored in a source control system such as AWS CodeCommit , the same as application code.
Which AWS service will you use to provision the same AWS infrastructure across multiple AWS accounts and regions?Use CloudFormation StackSets to Provision Resources Across Multiple AWS Accounts and Regions. AWS CloudFormation helps AWS customers implement an Infrastructure as Code model.
Which AWS service allows users to provision resources using a consistent and repeatable process?Maintaining consistent infrastructure provisioning in a scalable and repeatable manner becomes more complex as your organization grows. With AWS CloudFormation, you can easily model your infrastructure resources with code to enable configuration compliance and faster troubleshooting.
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