Your organization stands tall on foundational components of IT infrastructure. Upgrading these technology components is termed “Infrastructure Modernization”.
Infrastructure modernization includes the updation of hardware, software, networking, and other such components. It is done to adapt to changing needs, take advantage of new technologies, optimize costs, etc.
To achieve success in Infrastructure Modernization, there are certain DevOps tools developed by tech giants that serve as industry standards for others.
In this blog post let us learn about the best DevOps tools that play a vital role in infrastructure modernization.
11 DevOps Tools to Take Control of Your Infrastructure Modernization Journey
The DevOps tools you select to modernize your infrastructure depend upon the evaluation of your current infra and requirements. Based on these considerations, you can go for open-source legacy platforms, commercially supported modern platforms, or a hybrid approach.
Here’s the list of these tools:
1. Terraform – Infrastructure as a Code(IaC) Tool
Terraform lets you define and provision infrastructure resources. Since it supports numerous cloud service providers, it is flexible for a variety of cloud environments. By codifying your infrastructure with Terraform, you can enable version control, reproducibility, and automation. Furthermore, Terraform makes infrastructure management much easier with its simple syntax and modular design, allowing scalability.
2. AWS CloudFormation – IaC Tool for AWS Cloud
Specifically designed for the AWS, AWS CloudFormation provides infrastructure as code capabilities for AWS services. It allows you to define and manage AWS resources in a template format. Thus, enabling consistent and repeatable provisioning.
CloudFormation easily integrates with other AWS services and supports parameterization and resource dependencies, allowing dynamic and scalable infrastructure deployments.
3. Ansible – Configuration Management Tool
Ansible is a powerful configuration management tool that automates the provisioning, configuration, and orchestration of IT infrastructure. Using simple, human-readable YAML syntax, Ansible enables you to define infrastructure state and desired configurations across diverse environments. Its agentless architecture and idempotent nature make it easy to use and maintain, while its extensive library of modules supports integration with a wide range of systems and platforms.
4. Chef – Configuration Management Tool
Chef is another configuration management tool that allows you to automate infrastructure deployment and configuration at scale. It follows a model-driven approach, where infrastructure configurations are defined as code using Chef’s domain-specific language (DSL).
With its cookbook-based architecture, Chef offers flexibility and extensibility to encapsulate and share reusable configuration patterns.
With its focus on infrastructure as code principles, Chef provides auditable infrastructure management across your organization.
5. BuildPiper – Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) Tool
BuildPiper is a CI/CD tool specifically designed for modern microservices development. It provides a platform to automate the entire software delivery pipeline, including building, testing, and deploying your microservices applications.
The platform’s ease of use and powerful automation capabilities make it a popular choice for organizations looking to optimize their DevOps workflows and accelerate microservices delivery.
6. Jenkins – Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) Tool
Jenkins is one of the most widely used open-source automation servers for continuous integration and delivery. It enables developers to automate the building, testing, and deployment of software projects, facilitating collaboration and reducing time to market. Jenkins offers a vast array of plugins to support integration with various tools and technologies, making it highly customizable to fit the needs of different development teams. Its extensibility, flexibility, and strong community support have made it a cornerstone of many CI/CD pipelines.
7. GitLab – Continuous Integration and Delivery (CI/CD) Tool
GitLab provides a complete DevOps platform, including integrated CI/CD capabilities, within a single application. It allows developers to manage source code repositories, track issues, and automate the software development lifecycle from planning to deployment. With GitLab CI/CD, teams can define pipelines using simple YAML configuration files, enabling automated testing, code reviews, and continuous delivery. GitLab’s built-in features for code quality and security scanning further enhance the development process, making it a popular choice for organizations seeking end-to-end DevOps solutions.
8. Prometheus – Monitoring Tool
Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability in modern, dynamic environments. It collects metrics from monitored targets by scraping HTTP endpoints, allowing users to gain insights into the performance and health of their systems. Prometheus stores time-series data in a flexible database, enabling powerful querying and visualization with integrations like Grafana. Its efficient data model, support for multi-dimensional data collection, and native alerting capabilities make it a popular choice for monitoring cloud-native applications and infrastructure.
9. Grafana – Monitoring Tool
Grafana is a leading open-source platform for monitoring and observability, offering rich visualization and analytics capabilities for time-series data. It integrates seamlessly with various data sources, including Prometheus, Elasticsearch, and InfluxDB, allowing users to create customized dashboards to visualize metrics and logs. Grafana’s extensive plugin ecosystem and support for graphing, alerting, and exploration make it a versatile tool for monitoring applications, infrastructure, and business metrics. Whether monitoring performance, troubleshooting issues, or analyzing trends, Grafana provides the flexibility and scalability to meet diverse monitoring needs.
10. Aqua Security – Container and Cloud Workload Security
Aqua Security provides comprehensive security solutions for containerized and cloud-native applications, helping organizations protect their environments throughout the software development lifecycle. Its platform offers vulnerability management, runtime protection, and compliance automation for containerized workloads, ensuring security and compliance without slowing down development. Aqua Security integrates with CI/CD pipelines to automatically scan images for vulnerabilities and enforce security policies, enabling DevSecOps practices and mitigating risks in dynamic, distributed environments.
11. Hashicorp Vault – Secrets Management
HashiCorp Vault’s flexible architecture and robust security features make it a trusted choice for managing secrets and sensitive data in modern cloud environments. It supports various secret types, including passwords, certificates, and encryption keys, and provides centralized access control and auditing capabilities. HashiCorp Vault’s dynamic secrets feature generates short-lived credentials on-demand, reducing the risk of exposure and enhancing security. Additionally, Vault integrates seamlessly with popular DevOps tools and platforms, enabling you to incorporate secrets management into your existing workflows effortlessly.
Wrapping Up
Infrastructure modernization involves two key steps. First, you assess your current infrastructure and plan for adopting new technologies like cloud or containers. Then you implement tools like IaC and CI/CD to automate processes for efficient management. While these tools help with error-free and automated modernization processes, they also enable faster deployments and smoother scaling as your infrastructure grows. However, **choosing the right tools and integrating them effectively requires careful planning and expertise to maximize the benefits of modernization.
Don’t let outdated infrastructure slow your business operations! Our DevOps consultation services will help you craft a modernization plan and implement the right tools. Furthermore, our DevOps native platform Buildpiper makes your microservices delivery easier in a cost-effective manner. Schedule a demo today to see things get going!