Introduction: What is OpenStack and What are the Benefits of Automating It?
OpenStack is a collection of open source software tools used to build a computing platform that enables organizations to build and manage their own private clouds. An OpenStack cloud can be used to deploy, manage and scale cloud applications. One of the advantages of OpenStack Clouds is that they are designed to be scalable so you can easily add new Compute, Network and Storage resources when you need them. Here I use the term easy loosely because whether or not it is easy to scale your OpenStack cloud will depend on how you chose to do so. The amount of effort required to set up and run your OpenStack cloud will depend on if you choose to do everything manually or automate processes.
With automation tools such as Terraform, Kolla Ansible and Heat, organizations can automate their OpenStack cloud operations and reduce the time and effort required to manage their cloud environment. This helps reduce operational costs by decreasing manual processes and increasing efficiency. When organizations automate many of the functions within their OpenStack cloud, they can benefit from increased agility, scalability, reliability, security, cost savings, and improved customer experience.
OpenStack, But Easy
How OpenStack Automation Can Benefit An Organization?
Automation is becoming an increasingly important part of OpenStack deployments but automation can also be used for workload management within your cloud. Many of the tasks involved in the day to day management of a cloud environment are repetitive and can be easily automated.
These include:
-Provisioning, sizing and configuring resources such as Virtual Machines
-Monitoring and managing cloud performance and resource availability.
-Creating and configuring virtual networks
-Load Balancing
OpenStack automation reduces errors that can result from repetitive manual processes and frees up valuable IT time. When your IT team isn’t focused on mundane repetitive manual processes, they can focus on more important tasks, such as product improvement or developing new products.
Exploring the Different Tools for OpenStack Automation
To automate OpenStack, you will need to use orchestration and automation tools that run on top of your virtualized environment. Let’s explore some of the different tools available for OpenStack automation.
OpenStack Heat: an open source orchestration engine that allows you to automate the deployment of applications and services on your OpenStack Cloud. It provides you with a simple way to define and manage your cloud resources, such as: virtual machines, networks, storage, and software components. With OpenStack Heat, you can quickly deploy complex applications with just a few clicks, and it allows you to easily scale your applications to meet your infrastructure needs. OpenStack Heat can save you time by automating the process of setting up and managing your cloud infrastructure.
HashiCorp Terraform: a powerful tool that allows you to write out your cloud’s infrastructure as code, commonly referred to as Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Using an IaC model allows software development practices to be applied to your OpenStack cloud’s infrastructure. With Terraform, you can create and manage your entire cloud’s infrastructure with just a few lines of code. This makes it much easier for developers and DevOps engineers to manage their cloud environments in an efficient and cost-effective way. Terraform is great for automating infrastructure.
Kolla Ansible: an open source automation platform that allows you to automate your infrastructure. Ansible can be used for configuration management, application deployment, task automation, and more. With Ansible, users can easily deploy applications across multiple servers without the need for manual intervention. On OpenStack, you can use Kolla Ansible to deploy Kolla based OpenStack services and infrastructure components in Docker Containers. With Kolla Ansible you can change your OpenStack service’s configurations, add new OpenStack service, and repair your OpenStack cluster. Ansible is best used to automate things on your server.
Conclusion: Start Automating Your OpenStack Cloud Today to Maximize Efficiency & Productivity
Automating your OpenStack cloud is a great way to maximize efficiency and productivity. It allows you to quickly deploy applications and services without having to manually configure them. OpenStack Automation also reduces the time it takes to deploy, configure, and manage OpenStack environments. With automation, you can quickly scale up or down as needed, and reclaim and reallocate resources that are not being used to ensure that your resources are being utilized efficiently. While it does take time to set up correctly, it definitely pays back with time as your IT team will no longer be occupied with repetitive tasks such as spinning up and scaling VMs.
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