Cloudify 6.4 Poised to Improve DevOps Cloud Automation

DevOps automation platform vendor Cloudify is advancing its technology with the latest update to its namesake platform.

Cloudify 6.4 became generally available on Aug. 18, providing users with new capabilities to continuously update operations across different cloud environments. Also, governance tools have been integrated into Cloudify to help organizations comply with policies and implement cost controls. In addition, the updated Cloudify platform now boasts a new user interface and enhancements for Terraform infrastructure-as-code support.

Infrastructure-as-code technologies such as Terraform aren't enough to support organizations that want to create a self-service environment for configuring and deploying applications to run in the cloud, according to Cloudify founder and CTO Nati Shalom.

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"Cloudify is a means to an end to enable developer efficiency," Shalom told ITPro Today. "So instead of having developers accessing TerraForm or Kubernetes directly and being exposed to all those details, there is a much more simplified way."

How Cloudify Brings DevOps Automation to Cloud Operations

Cloudify is now essentially a wrapper that fits on top of infrastructure-as-code and configuration management tools, including Terraform, Helm charts, and Ansible playbooks, Shalom said.

The first step when using Cloudify is to import the existing infrastructure-as-code configurations and use them as a building block for a cloud workload. The second stage is composing the different components into an environment, with an understanding of how the different components relate and work with each other. The environment can be made up of any combination of foundational elements. The third step in the Cloudify process is the ongoing operations and continuously updating the component services as required.

"Cloudify is not just a user interface wrapper, it's an execution engine," Shalom said.

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Shalom explained that as an execution engine, Cloudify puts together the various building block components and runs them as if they were all on a single platform. The execution engine integrates security controls, scalability configuration, and visibility into the entire workload.

Continuous Updates in Cloudify 6.4 Ease CloudOps Workflows

Introduced in Cloudify 6.4 is an intelligent continuous update workflow capability that aims to make it easier for users to update cloud environments.

As things change in a workload and there is drift from the initial parameters, Cloudify will reach back out to the appropriate infrastructure-as-code or configuration management tool to make the necessary adjustments.

"We're taking a lot of the complexity out of updates, making it much more intelligent and basically pushing a lot of responsibility to Cloudify than to the user," Shalom said.

ServiceNow Integration Comes to Cloudify

Rounding out the updates in Cloudify 6.4 is tighter integration with ServiceNow.

With ServiceNow integration, Cloudify users get governance and IT operations management capability, according to Shalom. When a user wants to provision a new cloud workload environment, Cloudify can now trigger an approval process in ServiceNow. That process will also include cost estimation, for management to approve.

Additionally, Shalom noted that the ServiceNow integration allows for collaboration with IT teams and groups that are using the IT operations platform. For example, once Cloudify has configured an environment for a cloud workload, the ServiceNow system can be used to inform the appropriate users.

"We leverage a lot of those building blocks that are already available in ServiceNow," he said.