Is your cloud still manual? Five indispensable tools for cloud computing and infrastructure automation

No tool is omnipotent, but we can still find excellent products with the highest input-output ratio within the budget.

Automation of modern IT and cloud infrastructure has become a necessity. This rapid automation process has been accelerated by the emergence of a large number of efficient IT/cloud automation tools on the market. However, IT managers often face many challenges before choosing cloud automation tools, such as lack of powerful computing capabilities, inconsistent data monitoring, network problems, and troubleshooting.

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Solving these key pain points requires managing multiple aspects of the infrastructure, so no one tool can do it all. Lack of appropriate and necessary tools will maximize IT system downtime, which has a direct impact on the business. According to the "PagerDuty's Digital Operations Status Report", the sales department is the biggest "victim" of IT failures, with 40.4% of respondents claiming that sales is the most affected non-IT department. This will directly affect the bottom line.

Therefore, while driving automation in IT and cloud infrastructure, technology leaders must also ensure that business productivity is maximized.

This means that technology leaders must focus on the following aspects when choosing automation tools for their companies:

• Meeting the requirements
• Support structure
• troubleshooting
• productivity
• Budget

As a technical consultant for software development companies with more than a decade of experience, I have tried and tested multiple tools to help organizations meet their overall IT requirements. Based on my experience, here are 5 tools that are very effective in the current IT/Cloud Infrastructure Automation market:

1. Ansible

Ansible automates a range of IT work tasks, including configuration management, application deployment, cloud configuration, etc. It focuses on how the various systems of the IT infrastructure interact with each other, rather than managing one component at a time.

You can easily manage Ansible using a web interface called Ansible Tower. The tool offers a range of pricing models, and users can choose from basic, standard, or advanced packages and get a customized quote for the features they use. Ansible Tower costs between $5,000-$14,000 per year.

This is a user-friendly and very easy to manage automation tool.

2. Datadog

Datadog is primarily a monitoring tool for cloud applications. It provides detailed metrics for all your cloud applications, servers, and networks. It can be easily integrated with other automation tools such as Ansible, Chef, Puppet, etc.

Datadog's pricing plans include Synthetics, Log Management, Infrastructure, and APM, which are priced at $5, $1.27, $15, and $31 per host per month, respectively. Further pricing can be done based on Professional and Enterprise packages.

Datadog helps quickly detect and troubleshoot problems in your systems.

Therefore, it is a fairly time-saving and cost-effective solution to manage your cloud infrastructure.

3. Puppet (open source)

Puppet is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that enables users to define the desired state of their infrastructure and automate the system to achieve the same.

It monitors all your systems and prevents any deviation from the defined state. From simple workflow automation to infrastructure configuration and compliance, Puppet can do it all. The open source tool is free, while enterprise models for more than 10 nodes are paid. Companies can get custom quotes based on their requirements.

The preferred choice of companies like Dell and Google, Puppet is the ideal tool for maximizing productivity while maintaining system consistency.

4. Selenmium (Open Source)

Created primarily for testing web applications, Selenium is a powerful tool for automating web browsers. It is a perfect tool for web application testing and management. Companies can use Selenium to create quick bug fixing scripts as well as develop automated, progressive bug fixing mechanisms.

Selenium combines several pieces of software, each with a different purpose: the Selenium Integrated Development Environment (IDE); the Remote Controller (RC); the Web Driver; and the Selenium Grid. Selenium is free, open source software and is available under the standard Apache 2.0 license.

It is very easy to use and install, and it also offers extended support.

5. Docker

Docker is a tool focused on continuous integration and deployment of code. Developers can easily create and manage applications using Dockerfile.

Dockerfile enables application management in an isolated environment, including code, system files, libraries, and other functions. Therefore, it is the first choice for companies engaged in multi-cloud and hybrid computing.

Users can choose from three enterprise editions of Docker to manage Docker containers, starting at $750 per node per year.

Docker saves a lot of time and resources while increasing the productivity of the system and can also be easily integrated with existing systems.

Finally, you will also need to consult with your DevOps team to understand the best approach before finalizing the final tool. Finally, remember that you should continuously evaluate the tools based on your needs and upgrade them when necessary. Maintenance is a must.