Reasons for Automation of the Microsoft Azure

Many companies are struggling to keep their Microsoft Windows and Azure environments consistent, and to adopt modern technologies and practices. Manual processes and custom scripts can drag down the productivity of the IT teams, thus some automation is inevitable.

When companies want to deliver value to customers faster and to keep up with a relentless rate of change, they need to automate their infrastructure all the way through – from initial provisioning through application deployment, both on premises and in the cloud. By using Puppet Enterprise – the companies can manage their infrastructure as code so you can adopt DevOps practices, improving the speed, scale and reliability of your systems.

Automation of Microsoft Azure using Puppet

In order to create and manage the Azure Virtual Machines (VM-s) in a coherent way – the companies should apply some sort of automation. There are several tools on the market – that can enable full Azure deployment and management. Puppet is one of these tools, which enables software automation and configuration, so the companies can apply its descriptions in order to automate their workloads in Microsoft Azure.

Puppet can provide automation tools that can assist the application delivery and deployment process. It offers agents that should be installed on chosen machines to allow Puppet Master to run scripts that define the required configuration of the Azure infrastructure and VMs. Puppet can integrate with other products, such as Jenkins and GitHub for an improved dev-ops workflow. Azure supports clients’ efforts to apply hybrid cloud in the areas of infrastructure, user identity and management. By applying Puppet to automate their Azure services – the companies will get ability to run workloads where they fit best.

Provisioning and Configuring of the Azure Infrastructure using Puppet

Puppet Enterprise enables the companies to automate the entire lifecycle of their Azure infrastructure, from the initial provisioning through application deployment. The Puppet Azure module allows the teams to provision and manage Azure VMs, and gives them consistency and visibility into their infrastructure. The affiliated clients will get the convenient Puppet Enterprise support package.

Puppet Enterprise can be found in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, enabling the companies to quickly spin up VMs with the latest version of Puppet Enterprise for evaluation. There is special Puppet guide created, that will assist the teams to use Azure to provision a puppet master and a puppet agent. In order to deploy the Puppet Enterprise into your Azure environment you should install the Puppet Master and the Puppet Agent.

Migration to Azure with Puppet Enterprise

Puppet Enterprise can help the IT teams to accelerate their migration to Microsoft Azure, adopt DevOps practices, ensure consistency across their cloud and on-premises environments, enforce security policies, prove compliance, and scale operations in the cloud.

Enterprise IT organizations want to achieve greater speed and agility by moving to the cloud, but are hindered by the complexity of the migration process and new challenges presented by managing operations at cloud scale. Puppet Enterprise eases migration to the cloud and provides the ongoing management needed to scale operations securely and efficiently.

Customer Challenges:

• Accelerate migration to Azure. Moving to the cloud is just the beginning of a digital transformation journey and enterprises need an efficient way to migrate without disrupting their business.
• Adopt DevOps practices. IT organizations need to evolve how they deliver software to increase speed and reliability and better meet the needs of the business.
• Ensure consistency across cloud and on-premises environments. Enterprises need a seamless way to manage their cloud and on-premises infrastructure. Manually provisioning, configuring and managing environments is time-consuming and error prone, preventing them from moving workloads to the cloud at a faster pace.
• Enforce security policies and prove compliance. Security and compliance are major concerns when moving to the cloud. Enterprises need to pass more audits and spend less time fixing security and compliance issues.
• Efficiently scale operations in the cloud. Azure makes it easy to automatically scale based on customer demand. However, if not properly governed, this can quickly lead to sprawl, higher costs, and security and compliance issues.

Puppet Enterprise + Azure

• Enterprises can leverage their existing Puppet configurations to accelerate migration to Azure. Enterprises already using Puppet in their on-premises environments can easily reuse their existing configurations in Azure. They can define their infrastructure as Puppet code once and deploy anywhere, which speeds the migration process. Enterprises without a cloud automation strategy can use Puppet to mitigate many of the challenges that can derail the migration.
• Puppet ensures consistency across all environments. The Puppet Azure module makes it easy to provision VMs consistently, repeatedly, and securely. VMs under Puppet management are automatically re-mediated when unauthorized changes occur, enabling enterprises to prove compliance at any time.
• Puppet Enterprise helps enterprises scale. Puppet automation enables small teams to manage dynamic cloud environments. They can confidently increase capacity on-demand while enforcing security and compliance.

Customer Case Studies

Cxrus Solutions, an international company with headquarters in Singapore, provides high-quality services for application optimization, cloud practices, automation, security etc. Using Puppet and Azure Resource Manager, Cxrus is able to automate your cloud deployments, reducing cycle times from days to minutes and eliminating inconsistencies across environments.

Why Cxrus?

Cxrus Solutions is the leading end-to-end Enterprise IT Solutions Provider in Asia Pacific. Our core services include Digital Transformation, Flexible (Cloud) Infrastructure Solutions and Open Source Solutions. As Red Hat Advanced partner since 2006 – we have proven track record in deploying automation and DevOps tools for telecoms and enterprises. Our solutions provide reliability and high quality; they are based on the latest business technology, implementation, support, maintenance, and permanent monitoring and upgrade.

In October 2017, Cxrus Solutions has announced it has won the 2017 Microsoft Open Source on Azure Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology. The Microsoft Partner of the Year Awards recognize Microsoft partners that have developed and delivered exceptional Microsoft-based solutions during the past year.