Amazon Web Services (AWS), the largest public cloud currently available, has added the ability to use the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)’s powerful “Run Command” feature with a single log-in to execute commands in multiple locations, including EC2 instances, on-premises servers or virtual machines (VMs) from other cloud providers. Prior to this, it was necessary to log into each instance, server or VM separately.
Self-service IT is an important goal for many of our clients. They are looking for ways to increase their repeatability and speed the rate at which internal customers are serviced. Service Catalog effectively addresses each of these goals by providing automated infrastructure provisioning through easy buttons. Ops teams create these buttons and make them available to internal customers such as developers, engineers, or QA to easily request, receive and provision pre-approved infrastructure.
In our last article, we took a look at how marrying Ansible and AWS makes a great deal of sense for DevOps enterprises and discussed eight specific ways Ansible helps create greater efficiency and effectiveness for AWS deployments. Today we will dive into the recently refactored Ansible to discuss its newest features and how they can further help bolster your AWS efforts. In addition, Ansible likes to bill itself as “batteries included”. As a result, we will also review the new "batteries" or modules that are available with the release of Ansible 2.0.
I had a friend ask me the other day how many meals I make at dinner time. One, I replied. But, you have kids, she stated incredulously. Yes, but I don’t run a restaurant. And neither does IT. However, IT has been treated like a restaurant for decades, with different people and departments placing their orders for specific technologies, with a dash of speedy service on the side.
Before diving straight into the new Ansible 2.0 updates (which we will do in Part 2 of this short blog series), let’s take a step back and look at why Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Ansible make such a terrific match for DevOps enterprises. As you likely know, AWS is a collection of cloud computing services that make up the on-demand computing platform offered by Amazon.com. These services operate from 12 geographical regions across the world. The most central and best-known of these services arguably include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, also known as "EC2", and Amazon Simple Storage Service, also known as "S3". AWS now has more than 70 services that range from compute, storage, networking, database, analytics, application services, deployment, management and mobile.
As we discussed recently, microservices are being adopted widely across organizations and industries for their ability to increase service delivery and speed time to market while decreasing team overhead. As organizations begin traveling down the path to a microservices architecture, one hurdle that they often run into is secret management. For, as the number of microservices increase, so too do the number of credentials—often exponentially so—creating a need for effective and efficient management.
As DevOps consultants, at Flux7 we believe that Continuous Delivery (CD) is a key tenet of successful DevOps. And as heavy users of Amazon Web Services (AWS), we have a keen interest in any tools or features that streamline CD for our clients within AWS. For this reason, we are pretty excited to dive into the Amazon Pipeline Starter Kit. Now, you may be familiar with two services that Amazon has traditionally offered to help facilitate CD: AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeDeploy.
Pundits have declared that 2016 is the year microservices graduate from early adopter to early mainstream adoption. The aggregate predictions are certainly right if the call volume here at Flux7 is any indication. We’ve been seeing this trend in full force as we field call after call from organizations across industries, from enterprises to startups, all looking for advice and expertise in building their own microservices architecture.
The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly moving from niche use cases to normal business. According to research firm IDC, about three-quarters of respondents have IoT deployment plans, or already have efforts underway. Most enterprises don’t view IoT as a sideshow or something that will provide peripheral benefit, but see these efforts as strategic to the business.
According to Innovative Retail Technologies, 52% of surveyed retailers plan to actively move applications to the cloud this year. The initially tepid response to cloud is waning as retailers learn more about its strengths for availability and innovation. Yet, one question our AWS consultants frequently field from retailers is about achieving PCI Compliance in the cloud. As most readers of this blog know, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard, otherwise known as PCI DSS, is an information security standard requiring organizations to incorporate controls around customer data to prevent credit card fraud. There are several ways that AWS helps its retail clients build a foundation for PCI compliance and they’ve recently announced one more in the form of a Quick Start.