You may have heard the terms “cloud automation” and “cloud orchestration” and wonder they the difference is between the two. Looking deeper into the terms allows insight into a challenge for many teams that are looking to improve IT processes in their business.
Definitions
In general, cloud automation describes a function or task that is accomplished without human intervention. On the other hand, cloud orchestration describes the coordination and arranging of those automated tasks, leading to a consolidated workflow or process.
Examples
We’ll use an example that best explains these processes. Let’s say an IT team is looking to create a process to spin up an environment on which a new application will be hosted. In this case, the IT team needs to orchestrate a number of automated tasks. They may automate adding new instances through an auto-scaling event using auto-scaling groups, alarms, and elastic load balancers. The environment itself might also include a type of deployment automation tool. Then, puppet scripts may be used to automate the configuration of the operating system. Each of these functions is a cloud automation process.
Automation
Each of these automation tools needs to occur in a specific order, under specific security tools, and be given permissions and roles. That means that the engineer on the project will need to complete hundreds of tasks manually to deliver the new environment, even when the actual building blocks of the environment are automated. This is what makes cloud orchestration such a big deal.
Orchestration Tools
Whether using 3rd party software tools or tools native to the IaaS platform, orchestration tools will enumerate the instance types, resources, IAM roles, and more. They will also handle the configuration of these many resources and all of the interconnections between them. Engineers can use tools like VMware’s vRealize Orchestrator or AWS CloudFormation to create templates that can orchestrate these processes into a single workflow. This turns the entire workflow into a single API call.
Templates
Creating these types of templates is challenging but also time-consuming. However, by using orchestration tools, an IT team can simplify and remove risk from complex IT processes. The great thing is that it doesn’t matter if the team is small or large, either can find a benefit to this type of orchestration. A more modest team might use the tools to multiple manpower, while a team that is large might use it to make many changes to security configuration, data storage, and approximating a cost per deployment.
DevOps
You may be wondering exactly how orchestration relates to DevOps. The truth is that well-orchestrated IT processes can empower and enable continuous delivery and continuous integration, which unites teams in creating a set of templates that will meet a developer’s requirements. These templates can be categorized as living documents that embody much of the DevOps philosophy. DevOps is a philosophy that empowers and is powered by orchestrated processes, automation is a technical task, and orchestration is an IT workflow composed of many tasks.
You may already be seeing that there are many benefits to orchestration. It can improve delivery times, lower overall IT costs, free up time for engineering to work on new projects and reduce any conflict between the development and system teams. However, every business is in a different place with implementing these tools and the philosophy underlying orchestration. Some are just starting to implement cloud automation, while others are orchestrating significant changes and tasks into standard workflows to manage time and money. Regardless, there are benefits to be seen to all sizes and industries and orchestration could change things in very significant ways.