Cloud Native Operational Solutions - Configuration Management

One of the biggest draws of the public cloud includes services like managed Kubernetes or server-less functions. Managed services like these enable IT organizations to consume higher-level services, which allow the IT organization to focus their efforts on opportunities to create business value from technology. Configuration management tools like Chef, Puppet, and Ansible are central to modern cloud deployments. These tools enable an automated and consistent configuration of instances. This allows administrators to utilize cloud-native practices like immutable infrastructure, in which instances or servers are treated as low-value objects that can be easily recreated, as opposed to long-living servers that are carefully maintained. Each of the popular configuration management tools utilize a server/agent construct in which the agent or node is managed by the configuration management server and pulls its configuration from the server. This introduces long living infrastructure in the form of the configuration management servers that must be maintained. Creating automation cookbooks or modules is challenging enough without having to provision and maintain the infrastructure required to facilitate the automation. The benefits of managed configuration management are:

1. Quickly test new versions - One of the challenges with configuration management tools is keeping up with the release cycle of the software. Utilizing a managed solution enables IT teams to quickly spin up a configuration management server and rapidly test new features with little hassle.
2. Simplify upgrades - Once a new version of the configuration management tool has been tested and deemed production ready then the process of upgrading the server infrastructure begins. This requires a considerable amount of time and effort from the engineer. With a fully managed solution all of that time and effort is given back to the engineers.
3. Enable isolated automation development environments - The ability to provision a production like environment along with the configuration management platform gives automation engineers an isolated environment to test their automation changes with a greater assurance that it won't break a shared environment.
4. Scalable - Building the configuration management infrastructure that scales properly as the environment reaches thousands and tens of thousands of nodes is incredibly complex and makes things like upgrades that much more painful. The ability to utilize a single solution for ten nodes or ten thousand nodes is incredibly valuable.

Managed Deployment The following solutions are managed deployments. This means the configuration management software company has added a deployment solution to the respective cloud provider's marketplace to allow the infrastructure to be provisioned with the click of a button. Chef Automate The Chef Automate platform is a configuration management platform created by Chef Software that provides an end-to-end solution for automation engineers to develop, test, and deploy their cookbooks. AWS and Azure offer a marketplace offering of a Chef Automate that can be deployed and ready to use within minutes. Puppet Enterprise Puppet Enterprise is a configuration management platform created by Puppet that provides a standard set configuration management functionality. Both AWS and Azure offer a marketplace deployment option. Fully Managed The following solutions are fully managed configuration management solutions such that the cloud provider manages your configuration management platform on your behalf and allows engineers to focus on automation cookbooks or modules. AWS OpsWorks AWS OpsWorks is a fully managed solution that completely abstracts the server infrastructure related to configuration management. This allows organizations to take full advantage of configuration management tools like Chef and Puppet without the administrative overhead of managing a server. Azure Automation Azure automation utilizes PowerShell DSC (Desired State Configuration) for managed configuration management, this fits perfectly in-line with Microsoft's vision for PowerShell to manage all things. Ultimately the value proposition for configuration management tools is in the consistent automated configuration of the instances and not in managing the infrastructure to support the configuration management tools. Future posts will delve into other core operational aspects that are critical to cloud environments but in and of themselves don't provide much value.