5 Operations every cloud architect should automate

When it comes to the development of cutting-edge business applications, the cloud can be a huge help. When planning, developing, and releasing cloud-hosted apps, here are five tasks that every cloud architect should try to automate.

1. Scaling

Automated scaling is the foundation of cloud computing. Auto-scaling server resources or elastic scaling in cloud-native services like Amazon S3 and DynamoDB are vital to the cloud. One of the main reasons people move to the cloud is to build scalable infrastructure. The next automation is launching additional server instances quickly and painlessly, which is needed for automated scalability.

2. Server provisioning

Cloud automation provides a fully operating server instance with all necessary applications and services in minutes. Server provisioning automates auto-scaling and self-healing infrastructures. Automating the replacement of a failing or compromised server instance affects cloud problem solving. This functionality improves MTTR for many types of issues.
Automated server provisioning works similarly for virtual machine instances in compute services like Amazon EC2 and container instances in Kubernetes environments like Google Kubernetes Engine. Automation speeds up and optimizes server instance launching, scaling, and maintenance, which most cloud-enabled applications require.

3. Infrastructure building

Automatically deploying servers won’t launch your cloud application. Load balancers, firewalls, network segments, databases, and other application services like queues and caches must also be provisioned. Before your application works, all supporting infrastructure must be set up, configured, and connected.
In the cloud, infrastructure as code (IaC) allows API calls to provision application infrastructure. IaC lets you write source code, usually JSON or YAML, to set up your infrastructure (such as Git). Next, you use a tool to automatically provision, configure, and link your infrastructure components into a working network. Cloud architects should use IaC tools to develop secure, repeatable infrastructure provisioning cloud patterns. The advantages are incalculable.

4. Code deployment

Automated code deployment pipelines are not cloud-specific. However, cloud architects heavily rely on automated code deployments because they are a natural extension of other automation. The CI/CD pipeline automates code deployment. CI/CD, or continuous integration/continuous delivery, is a model that automatically deploys code from a software version control system to production applications (again, such as Git).
Automated code deployments are possible using many tools. The list includes Jenkins, Bamboo, GitLab, CircleCI, and AWS CodeDeploy. Each functions differently, and the cloud architect must choose the correct automation strategy to satisfy the development organization and business’s demands. However, most complex cloud-architected applications use automated code deployment. Yours should.

5. Native cloud services

Many cloud services provide automated dynamic scalability, which is sometimes neglected. Amazon Simple Queue Service, Amazon S3, and Amazon DynamoDB use automation to scale dynamic applications. Cloud architects choose S3 over local drive storage on compute instances because it is straightforward, safe, reliable, quick to integrate, and autonomous. Many additional public cloud services are similar. You benefit from powerful background automation by using them.
Automation defines the cloud. Many run their cloud apps without automation. Automation improves consistency, dependability, security, scalability, and business response. Lifting and moving an on-premises application to the cloud “as is” is a reasonably easy and uncomplicated migration, and often does not need a qualified cloud architect to perform. But such an application lacks most cloud benefits. A cloud architect is needed to build a cloud-enabled app that takes advantage of the cloud’s features. Most cloud-architected apps use automation. Good cloud architects facilitate, expand, support, and encourage automation in all cloud-based applications. A skilled cloud architect automates everything. Cloud automation drives them, and they appreciate employing it in creative ways.

Source: Infoworld