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What are the essential practices of devops and how AWS supports them?

DevOps is a software development practice of blending two critical IT departments-development and operations which are otherwise siloed. Over time, organizations adopted certain essential practices while adopting DevOps, these practices increased their capacity to deliver applications at high velocity and better quality. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is one of the many players who provide the platform and service to leverage and adopt these DevOps practices. In this blog, we will tell you how empowering DevOps through AWS can be achieved. Let us look in detail at how AWS facilitates the implementation of some crucial DevOps practices. Continuous Integration This is a software development practice where developers regularly merge their code changes into a central repository, from here automated builds and tests are run. This helps address bugs quickly and improve the software quality. It also reduces the time taken to validate and release new updates. AWS has three services to facilitate continuous integration. AWS CodeCommit: It is a secure, scalable, managed source control service that hosts private Git repositories. It also eliminates the need for an own source control system. CodeCommit can be used to store many things from code to binaries, it also supports the standard functionality of Git, and seamlessly works with existing Git-based tools.AWS CodeBuild: This is a fully managed continuous integration service that compiles the source code, runs tests, and produces software packages that are ready to deploy. CodeBuild can scale and process multiple builds concurrently. It not only brings customized build environments as docker containers but also integrates with open-source tools such as Jenkins and Spinnaker. AWS CodeArtifact: It is a fully managed artifact repository service that can help companies securely store, publish, and share software packages used in their software development process. CodeArtifact can be configured to automatically fetch software packages from public artifact repositories. It also allows developers to set up controls on a particular version of open-source software.Continuous Delivery: In this practice, the code changes are automatically prepared for release to production. When implemented properly, developers will have a deployment- ready artifact that has passed a standardized test process. AWS offers three services to ensure continuous delivery. AWS CodeBuild, AWS CodeDeploy, and AWS CodePipeline AWS CodeDeploy: This fully managed deployment service automates software deployments to compute services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, AWS Fargate, AWS Lambda, and on-premises servers. Using AWS CodeDeploy your DevOps engineers can enjoy benefits like automated deployment, centralized control, minimized downtime, and easy adoption to existing systems.AWS CodePipeline: It is a continuous delivery service that helps the developer to model, visualize and automate the steps required to release software. Using AWS CodePipeline, you can model the full release process from building code to releasing to production. It also builds, tests, and deploys the application as per the defined workflows every time there is a change in the code.Deployment Strategies: This is a strategy to define how the software needs to be delivered. Deployment strategies differ from company to company based on their business model. Here is a table on the development strategies AWS supports. Deployment Strategy Amazon ECS AWS Lambda Amazon EC2 In- place Yes Yes Yes Blue-Greeb Yes Yes Yes Canary Yes Yes No Linear Yes Yes No Linear Yes Yes No All-at-once Yes Yes No Infrastructure as Code: Practicing infrastructure means applying the same thoughtfulness of coding towards infrastructure provisioning. AWS provides a DevOps-focused way of creating and maintaining infrastructure. It provides services that enable the creation, deployment, and maintenance of infrastructure programmatically. AWS offers three services to define infrastructure as code. AWS CloudFormation: This AWS service allows developers to create AWS resources in an orderly fashion. All you need to do is write your resource in JSON or YAML with any code editor, check it into a version control system and the AWS CloudFormation builds the services in a safe, and repeatable manner.AWS Cloud Development Kit: Also known as AWS CDK, it is an open-source software development framework that helps to model and provision of your cloud application resources using familiar programming languages.AWS Cloud Development Kit for Kubernetes: It is an open-source software development framework for defining Kubernetes applications.Automation: Using automation, developers can set up environments rapidly in a standardized and repeatable manner. AWS facilitates DevOps automation through the following services.AWS OpsWorks: This service provides a level of automation with features like integration with configuration management software and application lifecycle management.AWS Elastic Beanstalk: It is a service that rapidly deploys, and scales web applications developed with Java, .NET, PHP, Node js, Python, Ruby, Go, and Docker.Monitoring and Logging: Amazon CloudWatch provides robust monitoring, alerting, and auditing infrastructure. This helps the developing and operations teams to work closely and transparently. AWS provides the following services for monitoring and logging. Amazon CloudWatch Metrics: These automatically collect data from Amazon EC2 instances, Amazon EBS volumes, and Amazon RDS DB instances. The metrics can then be presented as dashboards or create events to trigger auto-scaling options.Amazon CloudWatch Alarms: Alarms can be set based on the Amazon CloudWatch metrics; this alarm can initiate Auto Scaling actions.Amazon CloudWatch Logs: These logs can integrate with AWS CodeBuild, CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, and CodePipeline, thus providing centralized monitoring of all the logs.Amazon CloudWatch Logs Insights: You can scan your logs and perform interactive queries and visualizations.Amazon CloudWatch Events: It delivers a near real-time stream of system events that describe the changes in the AWS resources.Security: When it comes to security AWS follows a shared responsibility model which includes the following parts.AWS responsibility ‘Security of the cloud”- It is AWS’s responsibility to protect the infrastructure that runs all the services offered in the AWS cloud.Customer responsibility ‘Security in the cloud”- Depending on the AWS Cloud service a customer selects, the customer should perform a certain amount of configuration work.AWS Identity and Access Management: Using this you can create controls and policies that can be used to manage access to the various resources of AWS. The above-stated practices are vital to make your DevOps journey smooth and efficient. AWS has all these principles embedded in the platform which makes it an ideal choice to begin your DevOps Journey. DevOps is a process that requires expertise and proficiency. However, if you do not have the required expertise, you can always outsource it to an AWS DevOps consulting services provider Being an AWS partner, i2e has hands-on experience in DevOps consulting. Whether you want to develop DevOps in-house or looking to outsource it, we can guide you towards the right path. Why wait? Give us a call and our team is here to help you.

Helping enterprises innovate and achieve agility at the speed of the market with AWS and Automation Anywhere - i2e Consulting

i2e Consulting, a leading software services company delivering both consultancy services and tailored technology solutions, today announced its Consulting Partnership with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Automation Anywhere to help its customers design, architect, build, migrate and manage cloud solutions built on AWS and deploy RPA at enterprise scale.“This would enable enterprises to bring their demanding workloads to the cloud to speed time to market, reduce capex, and massively improve productivity,” says Vishal Rane, Co-founder and COO, i2e Consulting. This partnership, with both, AWS and Automation Anywhere is a step in the right direction to build and operate solutions on the cloud, helping our customers experience the value of automation first-hand while accelerating business outcomes.” he further added.Enterprises are increasingly looking at becoming cloud-native and deriving business benefits from moving to the cloud. And for this, they must not just transform their workforce, processes, and operating model, but also modernize critical applications in their portfolios while minimizing technical debt. At i2e consulting we make this happen with wider and faster adoption of robotic process automation (RPA) and intelligent automation. This partnership with Automation Anywhere enables us to offer flexibility and freedom of choice in RPA to our customers.AWS and Automation Anywhere will not only help our customers overcome the barriers of cloud adoption but also will empower them to fully leverage the benefits of RPA on cloud by accelerating the amalgamation process and improving business agility. RPA on clould will enable the speedy deployment, faster roll-out, and a quicker return on investment.To know more on how our professional service capabilities can assist your transformation journey, with consulting packages focussed on RPA and cloud adoption, get in touch with Vivek KadamAbout i2e consultingFormed in 2008, i2e Consulting is a software services company delivering both consultancy services and tailored technology solutions for organizations in the pharmaceutical industry.About AWSAmazon Web Services (AWS) is the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform, offering over 175 fully-featured services from data centers globally. Millions of customers—including the fastest-growing startups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies—are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.About Automation AnywhereAutomation Anywhere is a developer of robotic process automation software, which employs software bots to complete processes.

Top 4 Cloud Migration Benefits | Cloud infrastructure Services

Cloud migration offers lower costs, better security, scalability, and remote access, with IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS models enabling flexibility from basic infrastructure shifts to full application transformation.Benefits of Cloud Migration Reduced Cost – A cloud-based solution would cost almost 40 – 45% less than a traditional on-premise solution. Cloud systems eliminate the headache of regular maintenance and upgradation.Scalable and Agile – It is an on-demand, pay as you go model. Companies pay only for the service that they are using. Cloud applications can be upscaled or downscaled as per requirement, and there is no extra pay for any unwanted services. This converts the CAPEX investment to an OPEX investment for companiesBetter Security – Cloud solutions provide better compliance and improved security. It includes both the physical security of the infrastructure as well as the virtual security of your data. There are specific access control mechanisms to limit data access for users.Availability and Flexibility – Cloud-based solutions can be access anytime from anywhere. Decentralized database systems ensure that users can access data remotely from any part of the world. Cloud services offer enormous benefits. Companies are moving to the online cloud platforms provided by Azure, AWS, or Google Cloud. Accelerate your cloud journey with Cloud migration. Cloud Migration Methods Cloud migration depends on the cloud model adopted by a company. Cloud service providers multiple solutions, namely, Iaas, Paas, and Saas. Iaas – In Infrastructure as a Service, it means shifting the applications from on-premise infrastructure to the one provided by the cloud service provider. It is the most straightforward cloud migration model involving minimal changes. This migration model is called the 'Lift and Shift' model. There is no change in the architecture in this migration model.  Paas – Platform as a Service is where you run your code on the platform provided to you. It involves significant changes as you have to remodel your code to the new platform. It includes code changes, deployment rules modification, and library updates to adapt to the new framework. SaaS – Software as a Service sees a complete change in the application architecture of your systems. Here you have to run your code on entirely new software. This migration involves complicated changes like architectural changes, building new interfaces, complex data migration, providing roles and responsibilities to users, and training your team to use the new software.