Cloud Automation

The Business Perspective

Enstratius automation provides a single model for orchestrating applications across clouds using the tools you prefer.

The Enterprise Cloud Automation Solution

Automation is at the heart of the cloud computing value proposition. Automation enables quick and reliable application deployment, rapid response to changing conditions, and optimized use of resources and budget. Without automation, it would be nearly impossible to realize the reduced costs and increased agility inherent to cloud computing.

Enstratius meets the automation demands of enterprise applications by providing a single model to describe the application architecture and the policies that maintain how the application responds to its environment. This model is then applied consistently across the many clouds supported by Enstratius, without requiring custom development for each cloud used.

Enstratius applies automation across a variety of enterprise operations tasks:

Auto-provisioning

• Define application deployment architectures quickly and intuitively - then let Enstratius handle deployment to one or more clouds of your choice.
• Integrates with existing application deployment processes and tools, including Chef and Puppet.

Auto-scaling

• Create scaling policies around the data you wish to measure, such as transaction rates, page load times, etc.
• Use these policies in the cloud services and/or regions that make the most sense for your application
• Maintain automation for your applications from single platform and console.

Automated Recovery

• Restart failed components of your applications automatically based on policies you set.
• Utilize built-in disaster recovery to restore data from last backup in case of a catastrophic system failure.

Automated Backups

• Snapshots of images and data are captured on user-defined schedule.
• Place snapshots in supported third party cloud storage services for increased disaster avoidance.
• Snapshots can be encrypted for increased security.

Smart Cloud Topology

• Automatically distribute applications across availability zones, regions or cloud services.
• Distribute load across application components residing in one or more cloud services.

The real value of automating applications independent of the services they reside in, is the flexibility it provides the operations team as the cloud marketplace changes. Enstratius automation removes issues of cloud service “lock-in”, while providing value added features that ensure your application is as agile and resilient as possible.

To learn more, review the screen shots below or view an Enstratius demo. If you have questions or would like to discuss your project in more detail, contact us or call 612-746-3091.

The Technical Perspective

Enstratius automation provides a single model for orchestrating applications across clouds using the tools you prefer.

Enterprise-class Application Automation

There is an old saying about enterprise IT -- that it has been brilliant about automating everything in business...except IT.

Cloud computing is changing this. This is in part because the increased use of application APIs at the infrastructure and service layers has made automation easier. It is also partially due to the ready availability of the resources needed to do computing makes cloud an ideal environment for automation.

The technologies involved in cloud computing are not new -- they are the same technologies we have known and loved since client server and virtualized computing became the norm. However, cloud computing is an operations model that focuses energy on automating how the application and its data leverage those technologies.

Enstratius plays a key role in application automation by providing a consistent model for capturing application architecture and policies, while integrating configuration management, monitoring, testing and other operations tools as required by the application.

Automation capabilities include:

Auto-provisioning

• Use Enstratius’s application modeling tools to capture architecture and policy.
• Include multi-zone, multi-region and/or multi-cloud deployments, as well as which configuration scripts to execute at deployment.
• Integrates with existing application deployment processes and tools -- including Chef and Puppet.
• Enstratius technology enables the same automation to be executed in any of the supported cloud infrastructure services.

Auto-scaling

• Trigger scaling up or down based on server metrics (e.g. CPU levels, memory utilization, etc.) or application metrics (e.g. transaction rates).
• Scale within or across zones, regions or cloud services, as needed.
• Maintain automation for your applications from a single platform and console.

Automated Recovery

• Detect failure and restart lost components based on policies you set, such as 1:1 replacement or restoration to different cloud.
• Utilize Enstratius’s snapshot backup functions to rebuild lost data in the event of a catastrophic failure.

Automated Backups

• Schedule differential backups of images and data to the cloud storage service of your choice.
• Increase disaster resiliency by utilizing multiple cloud services for data and compute node backups.
• Optionally encrypt snapshots for increased security.

Smart Cloud Topology

• Define application architectures to include multiple cloud zones, regions or services, and let Enstratius coordinate deployment and scaling tasks.
• Distribute load across one or more cloud services, using native load balancing services, or virtual load balancers, such as Zeus.

By combining state-of-the-art cloud application automation with an open philosophy towards operations tools integration, Enstratius advances enterprise cloud management while integrating into your existing operations environment with ease.

To learn more, review the screen shots below or view an Enstratius demo. If you have questions or would like to discuss your project in more detail, contact us or call 612-746-3091.