At this point, automating cloud infrastructure has become a critical necessity for businesses. The speed of this transition is driven by the growing availability of effective IT and cloud automation tools. However, choosing the right tool can be challenging due to issues like limited computing power, inconsistent data monitoring, network problems, and troubleshooting difficulties.
With many aspects of infrastructure management, no single tool can handle everything. Without the right tools, businesses face increased downtime and disrupted operations. According to PagerDuty’s digital operations survey, 40.4% of respondents reported significant losses in the sales department due to IT problems, which directly affect company profits.
In the past, businesses viewed infrastructure automation before container technology as a temporary measure. While standardization and automation aren’t new in IT, infrastructure automation has gained significant attention recently as technologies like containers and orchestration expand the possibilities of automating infrastructure.
Tools like an enterprise’s standard operating environment (SOE) and configuration management systems can automate the configuration and monitoring of the operating environment. However, even with these tools, many tasks still require multiple servers. Deployed container images, for example, need to continuously evolve to stay compliant with standards.
In the ongoing effort to achieve effective infrastructure automation, “containerization” and “orchestration” have brought new life to the process.
Containers and Orchestration
The cloud-native ecosystem is vast and growing. Two crucial components of infrastructure automation are containers and Kubernetes.
When dealing with multiple containers or orchestration options, Kubernetes is a strong choice as it has become the leading platform for container orchestration, making it essential for modern infrastructure automation.
Immutable Infrastructure
Cloud technologies are shifting the way infrastructure works. Once deployed, the infrastructure doesn’t change in production; instead, it’s replaced with new versions as necessary. Tools like Kubernetes let administrators define the desired state for applications and infrastructure, with the orchestration platform managing this state in an automated way.
Microservice Architecture
Microservices break down an application into smaller, independent components that work together as part of a larger system. This approach allows teams to manage individual services independently without redeploying the entire application each time. Microservices are a good fit for containers since each service can be containerized separately. However, not all applications are suited for a microservices architecture.
Don’t think of infrastructure automation as a short-term solution, especially if you’re just starting with a single application portfolio. It should be viewed as an ongoing process, particularly when an enterprise is looking to break down an existing application into microservices.
Moving toward “immutable infrastructure” can take time, especially for companies that were using traditional applications before containerization became widespread. However, this doesn’t mean the R&D teams should be stagnant. They can continuously update the service and prioritize improvements, working toward containerizing the entire application over time.
Innovative Approaches to Infrastructure Automation
Michael Fisher sees this transition as an innovation process, where technology and familiarity with containerization come into play. Refactoring applications into microservices can be one of the best ways to start, with a focus on how users interact with the interface and experience. Once the need for containerization is clear, businesses have many tools available to scale infrastructure.
Continuous Integration, Delivery, Build Pipelines, and Artifacts
If your business is already containerizing workloads and using a Kubernetes platform, it’s time to stop focusing on traditional server-based terms. Instead, think about how to build pipelines and artifacts, which are key to automating deployments, scaling, and maintaining “immutable infrastructure.” Continuous integration (CI) and continuous delivery (CD) have become essential practices, and pipelines and artifacts are key steps in this process.
Pipelines are an efficient way to automate infrastructure building. Code and other necessary components should flow through the pipeline in stages—building, testing, and secure deployment—while content that doesn’t meet standards is filtered out. A CI/CD pipeline containerizes an application from code to the repository to production with minimal manual input. Managing containerized applications and immutable infrastructure helps prevent the drift seen in standard operating environments (SOEs).
Container images should be built from trusted, minimal containers, with automated, repeatable pipelines that use private image repositories. The build system should monitor new base image versions in real-time, ensuring timely reviews and updates. Key elements of a CI/CD pipeline also include testing and validation to ensure compliance.
Cloud-Native Tools
A single tool or process won’t usually achieve the desired results for automating infrastructure. This is similar to network security—if businesses still rely on outdated firewalls and antivirus software, it’s hard to ensure security. The same is true for infrastructure automation.
Today, many businesses are using hybrid cloud environments to tackle both cloud-native development and the adaptation of private clouds and on-premise infrastructure workloads. There are mature tools available to help manage this.
The rise of cloud computing has driven a reevaluation of how infrastructure automation is handled. Kubernetes has become the standard for container orchestration, and automation tools tailored for the containerized world are now widespread.
In the age of cloud computing, every project or platform is interconnected, especially in open-source environments. This creates a “snowball” effect for infrastructure automation. More businesses are considering using Kubernetes-native development patterns and processes to build and deploy pipelines for their projects in the CI/CD space, including Tekton pipelines and other deployment automation tools.
