staging-devopsy.kinsta.cloud

Tag: Cycloid

  • Cycloid Adds Templates to Simplify GitOps Workflows

    Cycloid Adds Templates to Simplify GitOps Workflows

    Cycloid today added a Bootstrap Stacks capability that provides DevOps teams with the ability to build Git templates or use ones created by the company to define cloud computing environments.

    The capability is accessed via a portal added to the Cycloid platform for automating software delivery. It also makes it simpler for DevOps teams to reuse templates that are compatible with Terraform or Kubernetes environments as needed.

    In the months ahead, Cycloid plans to release Headers, a metadata tool that automatically populates project parameters in display pages and a project management tool to provide a unified view for each development environment, including continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines, documentation, automation, logs, cloud costs and carbon emissions.

    Cycloid founder Benjamin Brial said the templates provide a layer of abstraction that makes it simpler to implement GitOps workflows. As a best practice, GitOps enables DevOps teams to unify the management of code to provision IT infrastructure and software delivery. However, providing access to a Git repository alone is insufficient, said Brial. DevOps teams need access to a set of templates that automate the process and eliminate what is otherwise a complex set of tasks, he noted.

    Easily discovered templates also eliminate organizations’ tendency to create redundant automations simply because a development team was unable to find an existing framework that another team already created, added Brial.

    That approach also enables DevOps teams to more easily embrace platform engineering principles to centralize the management of DevOps using a Bootstrap Service catalog embedded within the Cycloid platform, said Brial. That capability makes it possible to enforce GitOps policies in a way the developers will have to respect because the automation frameworks are readily available, he added.

    It’s not clear whether organizations are embracing platform engineering. Historically, adoption of DevOps workflows in most organizations has tended to flow from the bottom up. As a result, it’s fairly common for multiple application development teams within an organization to have adopted multiple DevOps platforms to manage workflows. Advocates for platform engineering are making a case for eliminating many of those redundant platforms in favor of a corporate standard.

    At the core of any approach is the assumption that centralization will reduce costs by eliminating redundancy. Issues can arise, however, when centralization results in loss of flexibility. Many of the teams that adopt DevOps want to be able to add and replace tools as they see fit. If there is a corporate standard that narrows their tool options, it’s just a matter of time before those teams start to look for ways around the corporate standard.

    Each organization will need to strike a balance between flexibility and the need to bring some order to DevOps workflows. In the meantime, however, the pace at which multiple software development initiatives are being launched is likely to force a platform engineering conversation that, in many cases, many organizations have postponed longer than anyone cares to admit.

  • Cycloid Tool Can Reverse Engineer Provisioned IaC

    Cycloid Tool Can Reverse Engineer Provisioned IaC

    Cycloid this week unveiled a tool that makes it possible to reverse engineer code used to manually provision cloud infrastructure. The Infra Import tool is part of an effort to create a more consistent and reliable version of that code using open source Terraform software.

    Benjamin Brial, Cycloid CEO, said Infra Import is based on Cycloid’s open source TerraCognita software, which enables IT teams to reverse engineer infrastructure-as-code (IaC) created using open source Terraform tools.

    Infra Import extends that capability to cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform or an IT environment employing the open source OpenStack cloud platform that may have been manually provisioned. IT teams can then create a configuration based on that Terraform code that could be employed across multiple clouds.

    Infra Import is designed to connect to a cloud provider and then automatically reverse engineer Terraform files and IaC stacks based on the existing deployment. It also ensures that the latest edition of Terraform is being used to create that configuration code, noted Brial. That capability eliminates the need for DevOps teams to keep track of what version of Terraform might need to be updated as new versions of the IaC tool become available.

    Just as significantly, Infra Import also makes it a lot easier to onboard new members to a DevOps teams because the tools uses valid secure configurations they know can be relied on. Misconfiguration of cloud services is one of the biggest security issues that IT teams today are wrestling with, simply because most developers lack the security expertise required to configure cloud services properly.

    Cycloid is in the process of rolling out a comprehensive suite of management tools that complement a lightweight framework it created to make DevOps best practices more accessible. The challenge is many IT organizations have already manually provisioned cloud infrastructure in a way that is, at the very least, often suboptimal if not downright insecure.

    Misconfigurations are rife across cloud computing environments, but most organizations are not prepared to manually address the issue. Automating the reverse engineering of those configurations is the first step toward enabling IT teams to address the problem at scale.

    It’s not clear to what degree configuration concerns have impacted the number of applications that would otherwise have been deployed in the cloud. Security is always listed as the top concern IT leaders have when employing cloud platforms. The issue, however, is not the security of the platforms themselves but rather the processes employed to deploy applications on the platforms. Cloud service providers have promoted a shared responsibility model for security under which developers are accountable for both securely configuring services and ensuring the overall security of the software environment. The trouble is, not every developer understands the implications of that shared responsibility model much less how to actually secure an application workload.

    It’s not likely security concerns will slow down the rate at which applications are deployed in the cloud. However, as more cloud security issues are encountered, more scrutiny will be applied.

  • Cycloid Brings Open DevOps Framework to the US and UK

    Cycloid Brings Open DevOps Framework to the US and UK

    Cycloid, a Paris, France-based provider of an open framework for implementing DevOps best practices, today announced it is expanding its operations into the U.S. and United Kingdom.

    Benjamin Brial, founder of Cycloid, said the Cycloid framework provides a lightweight approach to striking a balance between enabling developers to employ the tools they prefer and the need for centralized governance. The framework allows roles and policies to be pre-defined to ensure governance while service catalogs are used to deploy software using a set of drag-and-drop visual interfaces. There are also a set of management tools and features that provide additional visibility, automation, monitoring and financial controls to DevOps workflows.

    In effect, the portal that Cycloid provides to manage those workflows also serves to make DevOps more accessible to a wider range of IT professionals, added Brial.

    Cycloid

    Many organizations that embrace DevOps wind up building their own custom portal to achieve that same functionality. Rather than devoting resources to building and maintaining such a portal, Brial said Cycloid maintains and updates a portal platform that can be employed across any combination of tools that developers prefer. Other DevOps frameworks are often rejected because they require developers to adopt a specific set of tools, noted Brial. Without support from developers, it becomes nearly impossible to adopt DevOps best practices at scale, he added.

    After more than a decade of advocacy, adoption of DevOps within most organizations remains spotty. A significant factor in the lack of adoption is cultural issues involving skillsets. Many IT administrators lack the programming skills required to programmatically manage DevOps workflows. Cycloid is trying to establish a middle ground that enables IT operations teams to manage and govern DevOps workflows without having to acquire programming skills. The goal is to make it simpler for developers and IT operations teams to collaborate, said Brial.

    It’s not clear to what degree such an approach might increase adoption of DevOps best practices within enterprise IT organizations. However, it’s already apparent that the cost of hiring and retaining, for example, a small army of site reliability engineers (SREs) to manage IT environments at scale is often cost-prohibitive for many organizations.

    There’s no shortage of DevOps frameworks, but most organizations generally wind up crafting their own as part of an effort to tailor a DevOps workflow to meet their specific requirements. However, if there is a readily available framework that is highly customizable, Cycloid is betting more organizations would rather buy than build and maintain the entire framework themselves. Otherwise, DevOps teams would spend half their time performing the same repetitive manual tasks over and over, said Brial.

    One way or another, DevOps as a methodology for building and deploying applications needs to become more accessible. Proponents of DevOps have made a case for the methodology for the better part of a decade, with mixed success. The challenge continues to be finding a way to scale DevOps processes across the entire enterprise versus allowing each individual development team to define application development and deployment processes that, today, vary widely in terms of efficiency.