The billowing multi-cloud, with loosely coupled services, requires better observability of live configuration changes and management tools. Here’s how to address these challenges.
Virtualization is a critical infrastructure-architecture
layer that is required for achieving higher IT-maturity
levels, but several others layers—such as automation, management, and orchestration—are equally important.
VMworld 2013: Get on with Business - VMware Reference Architectures Help Stre...VMworld
VMworld 2013
Gargi Keeling, VMware
Luke Youngblood, McKesson Corporation
Troy Casey, McKesson Corporation
Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare
IJRET : International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology is an international peer reviewed, online journal published by eSAT Publishing House for the enhancement of research in various disciplines of Engineering and Technology. The aim and scope of the journal is to provide an academic medium and an important reference for the advancement and dissemination of research results that support high-level learning, teaching and research in the fields of Engineering and Technology. We bring together Scientists, Academician, Field Engineers, Scholars and Students of related fields of Engineering and Technology
Software as a service for efficient cloud computingeSAT Journals
Abstract This Research paper explores importance of Software As A Service (SaaS) for efficient cloud computing in organizations and its implications. Enterprises now a days are betting big on SaaS and integrating this service delivery model of cloud computing architecture in their IT services. SaaS applications are service centric cloud computing delivery model used as IT Infrastructure which is multi-tenant architecture used to provide rich user experience with desired set of features requested by the cloud user. This research paper also discusses the importance of SaaS application architecture, functionality, efficiency, advantages and disadvantages. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Service Delivery Models, Software as a Service, SaaS Architecture.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery on AzureCitiusTech
Healthcare organizations are increasingly turning to cloud computing to address business and patient needs of their rapidly evolving environment and modernize legacy applications. With Azure DevOps, healthcare IT teams can drive innovation, build new products and modernize their application environment.
Virtualization is a critical infrastructure-architecture
layer that is required for achieving higher IT-maturity
levels, but several others layers—such as automation, management, and orchestration—are equally important.
VMworld 2013: Get on with Business - VMware Reference Architectures Help Stre...VMworld
VMworld 2013
Gargi Keeling, VMware
Luke Youngblood, McKesson Corporation
Troy Casey, McKesson Corporation
Learn more about VMworld and register at http://www.vmworld.com/index.jspa?src=socmed-vmworld-slideshare
IJRET : International Journal of Research in Engineering and Technology is an international peer reviewed, online journal published by eSAT Publishing House for the enhancement of research in various disciplines of Engineering and Technology. The aim and scope of the journal is to provide an academic medium and an important reference for the advancement and dissemination of research results that support high-level learning, teaching and research in the fields of Engineering and Technology. We bring together Scientists, Academician, Field Engineers, Scholars and Students of related fields of Engineering and Technology
Software as a service for efficient cloud computingeSAT Journals
Abstract This Research paper explores importance of Software As A Service (SaaS) for efficient cloud computing in organizations and its implications. Enterprises now a days are betting big on SaaS and integrating this service delivery model of cloud computing architecture in their IT services. SaaS applications are service centric cloud computing delivery model used as IT Infrastructure which is multi-tenant architecture used to provide rich user experience with desired set of features requested by the cloud user. This research paper also discusses the importance of SaaS application architecture, functionality, efficiency, advantages and disadvantages. Keywords: Cloud Computing, Service Delivery Models, Software as a Service, SaaS Architecture.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery on AzureCitiusTech
Healthcare organizations are increasingly turning to cloud computing to address business and patient needs of their rapidly evolving environment and modernize legacy applications. With Azure DevOps, healthcare IT teams can drive innovation, build new products and modernize their application environment.
Software as a Service (SaaS) becomes in this decade the focus of many enterprises and research. SaaS
provides software application as Web based delivery to server many customers. This sharing of
infrastructure and application provided by Saas has a great benefit to customers, since it reduces costs,
minimizes risks, improves their competitive positioning, as well as seeks out innovative. SaaS application is
generally developed with standardized software functionalities to serve as many customers as
possible.However many customers ask to change the standardized provided functions according to their
specific business needs, and this can be achieve through the configuration and customization provided by
the SaaS vendor.Allowing many customers to change software configurations without impacting others
customers and with preserving security and efficiency of the provided services, becomes a big challenge to
SaaS vendors, who are oblige to design new strategies and architectures. Multi-tenancy (MT) architectures
allow multiple customers to be consolidated into the same operational system without changing anything in
the vendor source code. In this paper, we will present how the configuration can be done on an ERP web
application in a Multi-Tenancy SaaS environment.
decentralized, siloed environment in which most development now occurs, the need for effective governance is higher than ever.
In the fast-paced, decentralized, siloed environment in which most development now occurs, the need for effective governance is more significant than ever
Cloud computing is a technique that has a great capabilities and benefits for users. Cloud characteristics
encourage many organizations to move to this technology. But many consideration faces transmission
process. This paper outline some of these considerations and considerable efforts solved cloud scalability
issues.
Open Digital Architecture (ODA) is a blueprint for modular, cloud-based, open digital platforms that can be orchestrated using AI.
Designed to support our industry into the cloud native era, ODA sets the framework required
for CSPs to invest in IT, transforming business agility and operations by creating simpler IT and network solutions that are easier and cheaper to deploy, integrate and upgrade. Enabling growth, profitability and a cutting-edge customer experience.
Microservices: A Step Towards Modernizing Healthcare ApplicationsCitiusTech
This document/White Paper talks about the importance of Microservices and the role that it plays in today's ever-changing IT heathcare landscape.
The document aims to share a perspective on areas to consider while adopting microservices architecture for modernizing healthcare applications.
IT 8003 Cloud ComputingFor this activi.docxvrickens
IT 8003 Cloud Computing
For this activity you need to divide your class in groups
1
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
2
SuperTax Overview
Did you know President Abraham Lincoln, one of America's most beloved leaders, also instituted one of its least liked obligations - the income tax? In this brief history of taxes, see the historical events which shaped income taxes in the United States today.
SuperTax is an American tax preparation software package developed in the mid-1980s.
SuperTax Corporation is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
2
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
3
SuperTax Information
Desktop Software.
Support MS Windows and Mac OS.
Software method: CD/DVD media format.
Different versions:
SuperTAX Basic, Deluxe, Premier, and Home & Business.
Used by millions of users and organizations.
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
4
SuperTAX Project
SuperTAX has hired your group as a consultant to move their Desktop Software to a Traditional IT Hosted Software, available Online.
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
5
For Discussion:
Find the challenges that your team will encounter attempting to move SuperTAX Software to the new platform.
Prepared a presentation for the class.
On your Group you will need to define positions.
For example:
Project Manager, Senior Project Network, Senior Project Engineer, etc.
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
6
Infrastructure
Software Development
Software Testing
Marketing & Business Model
Project Management
CHALLENGES
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
7
Infrastructure
No more test in a single machine. (CD/DVD format model)
Test in a production cluster. (20, 30 users?)
A larger cluster can bring problems. (1000’s of users)
Testing must be done for different clients (mobile, desktops, OS)
Small performance bottleneck. Slow performance.
CHALLENGES
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
8
Marketing & Business Model
One time fixed cost vs. subscription model
Before a CD was sold, now a subscription model.
Maintenance and replacement of cooling, power, and server is required
CHALLENGES
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
9
Project Management
Project can take many months to years for Software Development cycle.
What model is appropriate for Hosted application. (Agile vs. waterfall)
Ability to try new features faster.
CHALLENGES
RUNNING HEAD: INTERSESSION 5 FINAL PROJECT PROJECTION 1
INTERSESSION 5 FINAL PROJECT PROJECTION 5
INTERSESSION 5 FINAL PROJECT PROJECTION
Shalini Kantamneni
Ottawa University
Intersession 5 Final Project Projection
The Design Process
This process involves the formulation of a model to be used in deriving a comprehensive cloud application. In this case, the model-view-controller design pattern will be used. This type of design pattern partitions the logic of the application into three distinct domains that are to be interconnected to provide a working cloud application (Jailia et al., 2016). ...
Overcoming Regulatory & Compliance Hurdles with Hybrid Cloud EKS and Weave Gi...Weaveworks
In this webinar we will be discussing how Dream 11, the world’s largest fantasy sports platform, and its large-scale distributed cloud can meet regulatory requirements while still taking advantage of the benefits that cloud native technologies like EKS and Weave GitOps present.
Topics we are covering include:
How you can utilize EKSD (AWS’ open source EKS distribution) and EKS (managed Kubernetes in the cloud) to establish common operational workflows that minimize operational overhead
How to lower operational costs with the use of ephemeral cloud environments for development, testing and even production
How to maintain compliance by enabling clear operational controls and auditability
Making Multicloud Application Integration More EfficientCognizant
With the dramatic, ever-growing increase of companies migrating applications and data to public and private clouds, the integration of cloud and on-premises applications is both absolutely essential and extremely complex. We offer a brief roadmap to establishing a "cloud console" for integrating multicloud environments.
The benefits of a hybrid and multi-cloud approach are best realized when engineering and operations teams have deep visibility into the health and performance of their applications and environments. However, gaining this holistic visibility can be challenging. Learn how Datadog's customers tackle this challenge.
Software as a Service (SaaS) becomes in this decade the focus of many enterprises and research. SaaS
provides software application as Web based delivery to server many customers. This sharing of
infrastructure and application provided by Saas has a great benefit to customers, since it reduces costs,
minimizes risks, improves their competitive positioning, as well as seeks out innovative. SaaS application is
generally developed with standardized software functionalities to serve as many customers as
possible.However many customers ask to change the standardized provided functions according to their
specific business needs, and this can be achieve through the configuration and customization provided by
the SaaS vendor.Allowing many customers to change software configurations without impacting others
customers and with preserving security and efficiency of the provided services, becomes a big challenge to
SaaS vendors, who are oblige to design new strategies and architectures. Multi-tenancy (MT) architectures
allow multiple customers to be consolidated into the same operational system without changing anything in
the vendor source code. In this paper, we will present how the configuration can be done on an ERP web
application in a Multi-Tenancy SaaS environment.
decentralized, siloed environment in which most development now occurs, the need for effective governance is higher than ever.
In the fast-paced, decentralized, siloed environment in which most development now occurs, the need for effective governance is more significant than ever
Cloud computing is a technique that has a great capabilities and benefits for users. Cloud characteristics
encourage many organizations to move to this technology. But many consideration faces transmission
process. This paper outline some of these considerations and considerable efforts solved cloud scalability
issues.
Open Digital Architecture (ODA) is a blueprint for modular, cloud-based, open digital platforms that can be orchestrated using AI.
Designed to support our industry into the cloud native era, ODA sets the framework required
for CSPs to invest in IT, transforming business agility and operations by creating simpler IT and network solutions that are easier and cheaper to deploy, integrate and upgrade. Enabling growth, profitability and a cutting-edge customer experience.
Microservices: A Step Towards Modernizing Healthcare ApplicationsCitiusTech
This document/White Paper talks about the importance of Microservices and the role that it plays in today's ever-changing IT heathcare landscape.
The document aims to share a perspective on areas to consider while adopting microservices architecture for modernizing healthcare applications.
IT 8003 Cloud ComputingFor this activi.docxvrickens
IT 8003 Cloud Computing
For this activity you need to divide your class in groups
1
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
2
SuperTax Overview
Did you know President Abraham Lincoln, one of America's most beloved leaders, also instituted one of its least liked obligations - the income tax? In this brief history of taxes, see the historical events which shaped income taxes in the United States today.
SuperTax is an American tax preparation software package developed in the mid-1980s.
SuperTax Corporation is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
2
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
3
SuperTax Information
Desktop Software.
Support MS Windows and Mac OS.
Software method: CD/DVD media format.
Different versions:
SuperTAX Basic, Deluxe, Premier, and Home & Business.
Used by millions of users and organizations.
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
4
SuperTAX Project
SuperTAX has hired your group as a consultant to move their Desktop Software to a Traditional IT Hosted Software, available Online.
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
5
For Discussion:
Find the challenges that your team will encounter attempting to move SuperTAX Software to the new platform.
Prepared a presentation for the class.
On your Group you will need to define positions.
For example:
Project Manager, Senior Project Network, Senior Project Engineer, etc.
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
6
Infrastructure
Software Development
Software Testing
Marketing & Business Model
Project Management
CHALLENGES
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
7
Infrastructure
No more test in a single machine. (CD/DVD format model)
Test in a production cluster. (20, 30 users?)
A larger cluster can bring problems. (1000’s of users)
Testing must be done for different clients (mobile, desktops, OS)
Small performance bottleneck. Slow performance.
CHALLENGES
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
8
Marketing & Business Model
One time fixed cost vs. subscription model
Before a CD was sold, now a subscription model.
Maintenance and replacement of cooling, power, and server is required
CHALLENGES
Group Activity 1 “SuperTAX Software”
9
Project Management
Project can take many months to years for Software Development cycle.
What model is appropriate for Hosted application. (Agile vs. waterfall)
Ability to try new features faster.
CHALLENGES
RUNNING HEAD: INTERSESSION 5 FINAL PROJECT PROJECTION 1
INTERSESSION 5 FINAL PROJECT PROJECTION 5
INTERSESSION 5 FINAL PROJECT PROJECTION
Shalini Kantamneni
Ottawa University
Intersession 5 Final Project Projection
The Design Process
This process involves the formulation of a model to be used in deriving a comprehensive cloud application. In this case, the model-view-controller design pattern will be used. This type of design pattern partitions the logic of the application into three distinct domains that are to be interconnected to provide a working cloud application (Jailia et al., 2016). ...
Overcoming Regulatory & Compliance Hurdles with Hybrid Cloud EKS and Weave Gi...Weaveworks
In this webinar we will be discussing how Dream 11, the world’s largest fantasy sports platform, and its large-scale distributed cloud can meet regulatory requirements while still taking advantage of the benefits that cloud native technologies like EKS and Weave GitOps present.
Topics we are covering include:
How you can utilize EKSD (AWS’ open source EKS distribution) and EKS (managed Kubernetes in the cloud) to establish common operational workflows that minimize operational overhead
How to lower operational costs with the use of ephemeral cloud environments for development, testing and even production
How to maintain compliance by enabling clear operational controls and auditability
Making Multicloud Application Integration More EfficientCognizant
With the dramatic, ever-growing increase of companies migrating applications and data to public and private clouds, the integration of cloud and on-premises applications is both absolutely essential and extremely complex. We offer a brief roadmap to establishing a "cloud console" for integrating multicloud environments.
The benefits of a hybrid and multi-cloud approach are best realized when engineering and operations teams have deep visibility into the health and performance of their applications and environments. However, gaining this holistic visibility can be challenging. Learn how Datadog's customers tackle this challenge.
Embracing Containers and Microservices for Future Proof Application Moderniza...Marlabs
The need for application modernization: Legacy applications are typically based on a monolithic design, which is organized in a three-tier architecture that covers a front, middle, and end layer. These monolithic designs reduce flexibility and agility due to the way it is compressed and leads to challenges in scaling as per business requirement. This challenge has resulted in modernizing these legacy applications using Containers and Microservices. Credit: Marlabs
Service Clouds are a key emerging feature of the Future Internet which will provide a basic platform through which it executes virtualized services. For effectively operating a cloud services there is a need to have a monitoring system which provides data on the actual usage and changes in the resources of the cloud and the services running in the cloud. Monitoring and managing cloud is a very different from monitoring and managing the individual servers. This paper will detail the different aspect of the monitoring and the parameters involved in monitoring of the cloud services.
Navigating the Cloud: Empowering Enterprises with Cloud SolutionsMaryJWilliams2
Dive into the transformative potential of cloud computing for enterprises with our comprehensive PDF submission. Explore the benefits, challenges, and best practices of adopting cloud solutions to drive business growth and innovation. Gain insights into leveraging cloud services for enhanced scalability, agility, and cost-effectiveness in today's digital landscape. To Know more: https://stonefly.com/white-papers/operational-optimization-private-clouds-enterprises/
International Journal of Computer Science, Engineering and Information Techno...ijcseit
Software as a Service (SaaS) becomes in this decade the focus of many enterprises and research. SaaS
provides software application as Web based delivery to server many customers. This sharing of
infrastructure and application provided by Saas has a great benefit to customers, since it reduces costs,
minimizes risks, improves their competitive positioning, as well as seeks out innovative. SaaS application is
generally developed with standardized software functionalities to serve as many customers as
possible.However many customers ask to change the standardized provided functions according to their
specific business needs, and this can be achieve through the configuration and customization provided by
the SaaS vendor.Allowing many customers to change software configurations without impacting others
customers and with preserving security and efficiency of the provided services, becomes a big challenge to
SaaS vendors, who are oblige to design new strategies and architectures. Multi-tenancy (MT) architectures
allow multiple customers to be consolidated into the same operational system without changing anything in
the vendor source code. In this paper, we will present how the configuration can be done on an ERP web
application in a Multi-Tenancy SaaS environment.
Software as a Service (SaaS) becomes in this decade the focus of many enterprises and research. SaaS
provides software application as Web based delivery to server many customers. This sharing of
infrastructure and application provided by Saas has a great benefit to customers, since it reduces costs,
minimizes risks, improves their competitive positioning, as well as seeks out innovative. SaaS application is
generally developed with standardized software functionalities to serve as many customers as
possible.However many customers ask to change the standardized provided functions according to their
specific business needs, and this can be achieve through the configuration and customization provided by
the SaaS vendor.Allowing many customers to change software configurations without impacting others
customers and with preserving security and efficiency of the provided services, becomes a big challenge to
SaaS vendors, who are oblige to design new strategies and architectures. Multi-tenancy (MT) architectures
allow multiple customers to be consolidated into the same operational system without changing anything in
the vendor source code. In this paper, we will present how the configuration can be done on an ERP web
application in a Multi-Tenancy SaaS environment
Presentation gives more insight about what is Converged Infrastructure , types of Converged Infrastructure and its benefits. Also it provides details about various Converged Infrastructure vendors in market and their shares.
Dynamic Component Deployment and (Re) Configuration Using a Unified FrameworkMadjid KETFI
Dynamic Component Deployment and (Re) Configuration Using a Unified Framework
M. Ketfi and N. Belkhatir
Proceedings of the ISCA 18th International Conference on Computer Applications in Industry and Engineering, CAINE 2005, November 9-11, 2005, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA. ISBN 1-880843-57-9 (pages 85-90).
Similar to Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control (20)
Using Adaptive Scrum to Tame Process Reverse Engineering in Data Analytics Pr...Cognizant
Organizations rely on analytics to make intelligent decisions and improve business performance, which sometimes requires reproducing business processes from a legacy application to a digital-native state to reduce the functional, technical and operational debts. Adaptive Scrum can reduce the complexity of the reproduction process iteratively as well as provide transparency in data analytics porojects.
It Takes an Ecosystem: How Technology Companies Deliver Exceptional ExperiencesCognizant
Experience is evolving into a strategy that reaches across technology companies. We offer guidance on the rise of experience and its role in business modernization, with details on how orgnizations can build the ecosystem to support it.
The Work Ahead: Transportation and Logistics Delivering on the Digital-Physic...Cognizant
The T&L industry appears poised to accelerate its long-overdue modernization drive, as the pandemic spurs an increased need for agility and resilience, according to our study.
Enhancing Desirability: Five Considerations for Winning Digital InitiativesCognizant
To be a modern digital business in the post-COVID era, organizations must be fanatical about the experiences they deliver to an increasingly savvy and expectant user community. Getting there requires a mastery of human-design thinking, compelling user interface and interaction design, and a focus on functional and nonfunctional capabilities that drive business differentiation and results.
The Work Ahead in Manufacturing: Fulfilling the Agility MandateCognizant
According to our research, manufacturers are well ahead of other industries in their IoT deployments but need to marshal the investment required to meet today’s intensified demands for business resilience.
The Work Ahead in Higher Education: Repaving the Road for the Employees of To...Cognizant
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Engineering the Next-Gen Digital Claims Organisation for Australian General I...Cognizant
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Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
1. Cognizant 20-20 InsightsCognizant 20-20 Insights
Novmber 2020
Configurability for
Cloud-Native Applications:
Observability and Control
The billowing multi-cloud, with loosely coupled services, requires
better observability of live configuration changes and management
tools. Here’s how to address these challenges.
Executive Summary
Over the last few years, becoming a cloud-native
enterprise has become an obsession for many
organizations. To facilitate this transition, some
enterprises have adopted a hybrid cloud (i.e.,
public and private) approach for its operational
flexibility and greater options of data deployment
and use. Multi-cloud adoption is also on the
rise to prevent vendor lock-in and to give IT the
ability to pick the most suitable offering from the
assemblage of public cloud providers.
These transitions are enabled by implementing
cloud-native principles like containerized
loosely coupled microservices, which leverage
cloud infrastructure. Cloud-native support
spans infrastructure, platform and services
shared across many applications, also referred
2. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
2 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
to as tenants. Finally, agility is derived through
automating certain infrastructure elements,
primarily configuration and deployment.
1
In order to reduce application or service downtime,
architects choose to design systems where the
configuration can be changed at runtime. Here
is where IT organizations run the risk of injecting
improper or erroneous configurations, which
can lead to service outages or abnormal service
behavior. To overcome this, IT must continuously
monitor system states and corresponding
configurations. Control over configuration
improves operational efficiency and provides
business scalability with speed and automation. It
also protects organizations from reputational or
financial losses owing to incorrect configurations.
Today, configurability and observability are
available as a service, as well as frameworks that
can be integrated with core run-the-business
applications. However, in the proliferating digital
world, configuring and observing tools and
solutions abound, each suited for a particular
platform and environment. Thus, monitoring
becomes complex, particularly when operators
switch between multiple monitoring and
configuration applications – for example, by
switching monitoring between AWS Wavelength,
Google Anthos and Microsoft Azure Stack Edge.
The solution lies in providing a single mechanism
to observe and manage dynamic configurations
across cloud infrastructure providers. This
approach can enable IT to apply the do not repeat
yourself (DRY) paradigm to configuration, to
improve the productivity of the IT staff.
2
This white paper focuses on how organizations
can adopt a controlled configuration, treating
configuration as code, and improve the agility
and quality of deployments. While going through
the challenges, we provide recommendations
and a framework that can accelerate cloud-
native application deployments and address
the aforementioned challenges. These
recommendations are based on our experience
in deploying hybrid cloud-native applications for
our customers by using tools that provide dynamic
configuration and control.
Cloud-nativity: A primer
Cloud-native applications are built on the principles
of quick and automated deployment – including
infrastructure and platform – as well as continuous
integration and continuous deployment, the ability
to scale up and down, persistent monitoring and
automated recovery. Configurability requires an
ability to quickly apply and modify configurations
to automate the scaling requirements by activating
new software instances.
Accurate configurations are essential, since
incorrect ones not only affect applications
availability and service configuration, but also
have an impact on downstream applications and
services. When systems are detected as having
incorrect configurations, and are not functioning
as required, then we need to roll back to the
right working combination of configurations.
This is difficult when multiple changes are done
simultaneously to loosely coupled microservices.
Good rollback is made possible by maintaining
proper audit records. Again, the challenge here
is that each cloud platform provider brings its
own tools to configure the software, maintain the
history of changes and provide rollback options.
Since organizations are adopting a multi-cloud
3
and/or hybrid strategy, the tools from each plat-
3. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
3 / ConfigurabilityforCloud-NativeApplications:ObservabilityandControl3 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
form must be integrated or orchestrated using
proprietary methods. However, they can be difficult
to maintain and scale. Orchestration tools that
provide a unified interface to manage and control
this heterogeneous landscape are classified as im-
perative or declarative (see additional detail in the
next section). A combination of these tools provides
the capability to react and manage these configu-
rations. With this single system, organizations are
informed of a code change and can then visualize
and understand the impact of the change.
The benefits to IT leaders include the ability
to first foresee and then overcome a variety of
challenges, which start with a means for managing
heterogeneous, hybrid cloud environments. This
enables them to:
❙ Quickly and efficiently configure services,
through advanced automation, across the
entire IT landscape: infrastructure, platform,
application and services.
❙ Continuously monitor and reconcile differences.
❙ Control the changes and reconciliation process
via a customizable workflow.
❙ Provide proper visualization of changes to
understand the impact radius of the change.
❙ Maintain a history of changes, with the ability
to cherry-pick changes and apply them or roll
back to a defined working set.
❙ Migrate data between different environments.
4. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
4 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
The declarative or imperative tool trade-off
Contemporary DevOps practices emphasize
the accomplishment of tasks with code rather
than graphical user interfaces. DevOps devotees
have progressed from using custom scripts with
remote command line interfaces (CLIs)
4
or using
infrastructure providers’ application program
interfaces (APIs) to configure resources.
With the advent of multi-cloud environments,
third-party and cross-platform tools have become
exceptionally popular. Tools in this category, which
include Terraform,
5
Ansible, Chef and Puppet,
can be classified as declarative or imperative.
6
An imperative tool has step-by-step instructions on
the sequence of deployment and is better suited
for the flexibility of deployments offered (e.g., Chef
and Ansible).
Declarative tools, on the other hand, provide built-
in support that can help IT organizations reach
the desired state by just providing configuration
values. Declarative tools allow operators to define
a desired system state, and always allow current
configurations to be compared against it. This
approach has certain limitations; mainly, a concrete
syntax or schema has to be defined and agreed
upon.
7
Sometimes, these packages do not support
the required custom configurations or interfaces.
Given this dichotomy, IT organizations need a
means for pulling the two categories together into
a single platform. Take the case of declarative tools:
IT needs an ability to insert certain customizations
or functions that are not supported by third-
party vendor packages. Hence, declarative tools
must be extended for custom configurations or
unsupported interfaces. This is because the current
declarations do not support our requirement. Once
this happens, the entire system – infrastructure,
platform, applications and services configuration –
can be managed by a single system.
5. There are two approaches when code is used to represent
configurations – infrastructure as code (IaC) and configuration as
code (CaC). IaC represents configurations for virtual machines,
networks, storage, etc., whereas CaC represents the configurations
for applications, servers, jobs, etc.
Cognizant 20-20 Insights
5 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
Integration with source control systems for
a multiuser environment
In a microservices, multiuser, multiple-applications
environment, concurrent changes are executed
simultaneously. Observation of these changes
requires an ability to differentiate and protect
changes made in each of these sessions. In order to
manage the configuration changes in a multiuser
environment, it is necessary to maintain it as a
version of configuration files (versioned artifact).
In order to maintain configuration versions, the
various system and application configurations
need to be stored in a version control system.
Once configuration versions are checked, IT
must maintain the configuration written in a code
format so it can utilize all the features of a version
control system (i.e., difference, patch, merge, etc.).
There are two approaches when code is used
to represent configurations – infrastructure as
code (IaC) and configuration as code (CaC). IaC
represents configurations for virtual machines,
networks, storage, etc., whereas CaC represents the
configurations for applications, servers, jobs, etc.
CaC is a set of prescriptions that allow configuration
changes to be written once and then applied with
DRY principles to avoid repetition and improve
productivity. IT organizations must consider
merging IaC and CaC in a single system. In order
to ensure a common tool for management,
the same language must be used to describe
all configurations. Many languages are used to
describe configurations, such as HCL, YAML and
JSON. Each allows the creation of a controlled
approval workflow similar to merge requests used
for code reviews and to baseline their impact. This
also allows IT to patch or roll back changes in case
they are needed. Once a history of changes is
established, audits can be conducted in the event
the environment is integrated with control tools.
Visualizations and impact radius
In the age of loosely coupled cloud applications,
it is necessary – and often challenging – to figure
out the impact of change. Two categories of
tools are available – generic and domain-specific
visualizations. Generic tools include the text diff
provided by version control tools; some provide
reference to related systems that use the same
configuration and hence might malfunction. Blast
radius is one such tool; it highlights areas of impact
using the dependencies within the configuration.8
Beyond this, organizations must create domain-
specific visualizations. These are custom
visualizations that can provide operators specific
6. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
6 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
views in a monitoring dashboard. For multiple
systems operators (delivering video over wired or
wireless connections, for example), it is important
to configure programs and to channel lineups by
different regions or geographies. If one channel
source is changed, it will be useful to visualize where
various packages and programs are impacted.
Security and compliance
These tools are automated and require authorization
tokens.9
Tokens must comply with organization
practices and standards. The security and
management of these tokens must be a top priority.
This can be achieved by integrating with secret
management solutions such as Hashicorp VAULT.
This handles the secret sprawl.10
Multi-cloud support
As organizations embrace a hybrid or multi-cloud
strategy for cloud-native applications, infrastructure
must be spread across multiple clouds to ensure
multiple processing pipelines. Cloud platform
providers often don’t offer tools that allow interaction
with other platforms. Doing so requires an
abstraction of functionality offered by each of the
clouds. Therefore, organizations need platform-
agnostic tools to achieve this, such as Terraform,
Chef and Puppet.
7. 7 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
Cognizant 20-20 Insights
Case in Point: Config as Code
Accelerator
Our reference architecture and an accelerator (see Figure 1 , page 10) can solve many of the
aforementioned challenges. It contains all required integrations and has been deployed in
customer locations to manage platform and infrastructure configurations. Here is one such
instance where the accelerator was modified to solve one of our customer’s problem areas.
A global leader in media and entertainment products that power consumer entertainment
experiences needed a better way of configuring shared services while onboarding new
partners and video service providers. As part of its expanded product portfolio, it offers
a suite of component technologies that can be integrated with customer platforms or
deployed as an integrated solution for video service providers. These customers handle
partner site data, applications and platform configuration data. Most of these configurations
are handled by their own operators or are integrated with their partner systems.
As this product portfolio strategy unfolded, it encountered:
❙ Large cycles while onboarding new operators, which could take weeks to resolve. These
need to be shortened to a day. This caused a delay in its go-to-market strategy for
partners/operators.
❙ The need among IT staff for in-depth knowledge of the domain to understand the proper
configurations and apply the right configurations.
❙ Failures of existing configuration processes of its partners to align with the principles of
cloud-native adoption of our client.
With our client, we observed the following:
❙ A setup was required to separate and store configurations (configuration code, an
artifact) of each operator in each of their environments and for each feature they offered.
❙ The store needs to maintain versioned artifacts.
❙ The configurations need to be modelled as domain objects.
Quick Take
8. 8 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
Cognizant 20-20 Insights
❙ The relationships need to be visualized in web pages to understand the impact of
changes.
❙ The changes in configurations need to be observed, reviewed, and approved or rejected.
❙ Based on the above, a change can continue to stay or be rolled back.
All of these events will enable automation, controlled approval and history preservation of
changes.
We integrated the customer’s platform services with its config as code accelerator to meet
these requirements.
Once config as code was deployed, the following benefits were realized:
❙ New operators could be onboarded within a day in various environments.
❙ A configuration prepared for one environment for an operator can be used in multiple
environments.
❙ Configurations change impact can be visualized using domain-specific visualization
templates. So the impact of change is known without requiring deep know-how of the
application.
❙ Following cloud-native principles resulted in dynamic configurability that allows
applications to scale.
❙ New configurations are easy to propagate between various environments.
This has improved the stability of the deployment environments, leading to shorter
verification cycles and reduced operations effort.
Quick Take
9. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
9 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
Code as config: Features
The accelerator described above has been
extended and can be integrated with any public
cloud or custom deployment management tool
for managing multi-cloud/hybrid/multi-tenant
applications or services. The framework is built
along DRY principles and provides the following
features:
❙ CaC capabilities.
❙ A configuration management database that
captures the desired and currently configured
values for various service environments.
❙ Methods to observe and approve new configura-
tions on an environment and/or update existing
ones after initial system dependencies are set.
❙ Tracking, comparing to a previously configured
state version, and updating of desired and
deployed configurations in various environments.
❙ Secured secret storage and role-based access
controls.
❙ An audit trail/changelog of all approved, rejected,
implemented changes with success, failure or
rollback states.
❙ Ways to visualize and compare the configuration
across environments.
❙ Integration with known identity and access
management solutions for security assertion
markup language (SAML)-based authentication,
e.g., Okta for role-based access control.
❙ Secure storage with a vault.
❙ Open source software deployed in a Kubernetes
environment.
Our approach includes an accelerator that
supports and can be integrated with the following
capabilities:
❙ Any platform: AWS, GCP, Azure and Openstack.
❙ A variety of version control systems for workflow
management, such as Github and Gitlabs.
❙ Many ticketing systems, such as ServiceNow and
JIRA.
❙ Numerous virtual network functions, such as
Palo Alto, etc.
❙ Software such as Splunk and ELK for monitoring,
notification and alerts.
This solution generalizes the services offered by
configuration management across platforms,
thereby abstracting the details and specifics of each
cloud platform.
10. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
10 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
Looking forward
Our analysis of the framework’s deployment
provides insights into the best practices for
configuration control in a hybrid/multi-cloud
environment.
Rich visualizations of configuration changes based
on individual domains help IT realize the impact of
change, without understanding the application or
service in depth and avoiding dependency on the
development teams for support. This has helped
in reducing time to productionize applications or
services.
A single monitor for observing and controlling the
configurations helps operators to react to chang-
ing configurations in an informed way. This has
led to reduction in errors (which have not been
quantified here).
The anatomy of a CaC tool
CM
Datastore
Platform
Updates
Operator Config
Requests
Ticketing
System
Connector
Code Config Editor
CM REST
APIs
GIT Instance
Web
Github
Config Store
Core Runtime,
Scripts State Monitor
Custom
Provider
REST
API-Based
Config Provider
(CONFIGURED STATE ) CONFIGURED DATA IN SERVICE
AUTHORIZED AND ROLE-BASED ACCESS
CM SYSTEM
Web UI Programmatic API
ADVANTAGES OF THE
PROPOSED ARCHITECTURE
Power User
Config edits
Application
Updates
| Extensible for integration with
infrastructure and host
configuration.
| Rich visualizations with deeper
insights on impact.
| Configuration as code, approval
and versioning.
| Vault-based secrets store.
| Scale with Kubernetes.
Platform-Infra-Apps
Figure 1
11. Cognizant 20-20 Insights
About the author
Varadarajan
Domain Architect, Communications, Media & Technology, Cognizant
Varadarajan is a Domain Architect within Cognizant’s Communications, Media and Technology business
unit. He has over 24 years of development and design experience in IT and related systems. A technology
enthusiast, Varadarajan focuses on applying the latest trends across industries in the communications
and media domains. He has a B.Tech degree from IIT Kharagpur in India. Varadarajan can be reached at
Varadarajan.A@cognizant.com| www.linkedin.com/in/varadarajan/.
11 / Configurability for Cloud-Native Applications: Observability and Control
As demonstrated, to drive the agility of deployment
of cloud-native applications, services, platforms and
infrastructure, with loosely-coupled microservices,
and a multi-cloud strategy, IT organizations need
tools that behave like code. Tools that provide IaC
and CoC aim to cover the full landscape.
Coupled with deep visualizations, version control
and secrets management, IT can address all
requirements without the need to switch between
multiple tools. Passive control of configuration
changes – by observing and reacting – ensures that
operational agility is not compromised.
Endnotes
1 Tom Grey,“5 principles for cloud-native architecture – what it is and how to master it,”June 19, 2019, https://cloud.google.
com/blog/products/application-development/5-principles-for-cloud-native-architecture-what-it-is-and-how-to-master-it.
2 https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/97-things-every/9780596809515/ch30.html.
3 https://www.gartner.com/en/conferences/apac/infrastructure-operations-cloud-india/gartner-insights/swg-why-
organizations-choose-a-multicloud-strategy.
4 https://www.w3schools.com/whatis/whatis_cli.asp.
5 https://www.terraform.io/docs/modules/composition.html.
6 Tytus Kurek,“Declarative vs Imperative: DevOps done right,” Ubuntu, blog, Aug. 6, 2019, https://ubuntu.com/blog/
declarative-vs-imperative-devops-done-right.
7 “The architecture of declarative configuration management,” Made of Bugs blog, Nov. 12, 2019, https://blog.nelhage.com/
post/declarative-configuration-management/.
8 https://github.com/28mm/blast-radius.
9 “Token Based Authentication Made Easy” Auth0, https://auth0.com/learn/token-based-authentication-made-easy/.
10 Armon Dadgar,“What is ‘secret sprawl’ and why is it harmful?” https://www.hashicorp.com/resources/what-is-secret-sprawl-
why-is-it-harmful/.