- Utilizing Infrastructure as Code (IaC) on Google Cloud enhances productivity, with Virtusa offering expertise in streamlining implementation and accelerating cloud transformation.
- Challenges in IaC adoption include learning curve, code complexity, and adoption resistance, addressed through training, codebase maintenance, and fostering a collaborative culture.
- Benefits of IaC standardization include automation, scalability, version control, and cost optimization, complemented by Virtusa’s engineering-focused approach and accelerators like vPaaC and BPaaC.
Utilising Infrastructure as Code (IaC) as the standard approach on Google Cloud can drive consistent productivity across enterprises. Cloud transformation gains momentum in 2024, introducing uncertainties during implementation.
Alongside finalising strategy, teams tackle decisions on cloud selection and tool adoption. Key factors include total cost of ownership (TCO), optimal architecture practices, application mapping, migration planning, and security compliance. Businesses aid teams to adapt to the new operational model.
Speed is crucial: Strategy execution timeframes dictate time-to-market and outcomes from cloud adoption realisation.
In this context, Infrastructure as Code (IaC) emerges as vital. Virtusa has refined IaC best practices over a decade, empowering organisations to swiftly provision and adapt infrastructure to changing business needs. Leveraging Google Cloud’s suite of IaC tools and third-party solutions like Terraform, Chef, Puppet, and Ansible streamlines IaC implementation.
Challenges in IaC adoption
Learning curve: Moving to IaC can be difficult, especially for teams used to manual infrastructure management. It requires acquiring new skills and mindsets. Robust training and mentorship can aid this transition.
Code complexity: Expressing infrastructure as code demands maintaining a clean, modular codebase with version control. Teams can apply the coding standards used for applications to the release management process.
Adoption resistance: Some team members may resist transitioning from traditional infrastructure management to IaC. Cultivating a culture of collaboration, continuous learning, and experimentation helps teams embrace change more readily.
Benefits of IaC standardization
By navigating potential challenges, enterprises can enhance the speed and effectiveness of their IaC journey. IaC on Google Cloud offers several benefits:
Automation and consistency: IaC facilitates the automation of infrastructure provisioning, reducing manual errors and ensuring uniform deployments. This uniformity is crucial for creating reproducible development, testing, and production environments.
Scalability: Google Cloud’s elasticity permits infrastructure to dynamically scale based on demand. IaC can be utilized to automatically scale resources, ensuring optimal performance without manual intervention.
Version control of Google Cloud configuration: Storing infrastructure configurations as code in version-controlled repositories promotes collaboration. Changes are monitored, and rollbacks can be executed if issues arise, ensuring a dependable version history.
Cost optimization: IaC provides precise resource control. Combined with automation, teams can optimize costs by programmatically provisioning and de-provisioning resources as necessary. Google Cloud’s cost management tools complement this by offering insights for further optimization.
Also read: The automation dilemma: Convenience or over-reliance?
The significance of an Engineering-First approach
Collaborating with an engineering-focused partner like Virtusa offers additional advantages in embracing IaC on Google Cloud. With a team of specialists, Virtusa can facilitate the initiation, development, and transition of an organization’s IaC journey. Their expertise is intertwined with extensive experience in navigating potential challenges and pitfalls. Virtusa’s standard approach involves constructing an IaC platform integrated with DevSecOps pipelines, facilitating seamless deployment of infrastructure and applications, thereby expediting the realization of value for IaC initiatives and overall cloud transformation.
Virtusa has developed several accelerators in IaC with reusable components to streamline coding and implementation, thereby allocating resources more efficiently to bolster cost savings. Clients utilizing Virtusa Pattern as Code (vPaaC), powered by Terraform Studio, can enhance productivity by 30%. Employing Virtusa’s Terraform Studio to deploy an application architecture on Google Cloud enables a scalable deployment process and minimizes configuration challenges. Additionally, Virtusa provides Blueprint-as-a-Code (BPaaC) to automate infrastructure provisioning on Google Cloud, further enhancing agility and productivity.
Also read: Valeo embraces Google Cloud and AI to drive automotive innovation
Illustrative example
In a recent project, one of Virtusa’s clients encountered hurdles while migrating their data center application infrastructure, grappling with issues related to scalability, stability, and manageability. Urgency to vacate the data center prompted the client to seek a consistent and reusable migration strategy. Challenges such as application performance, infrastructure provisioning complexity, manual deployments, and extended disaster recovery (DR) provisioning timelines were identified as impediments.
Also read: Schneider, NVIDIA to build AI ‘benchmark’ data centre design
Virtusa assisted the client in deploying infrastructure provisioning for the development, stage, and production environments by constructing an IaC platform. By integrating the IaC platform with application DevOps pipelines, the application stack was seamlessly installed, integrated, configured, and managed. Database migrations from the data center for Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL), PostgreSQL, and Elasticsearch were executed smoothly, and application functionality was validated with the underlying infrastructure managed by the IaC platform.
Client experienced the following benefits:
1. Automated provisioning and deployment of Google Cloud infrastructure, resulting in reduced time required for new infrastructure setup.
2. 50% decrease in disaster recovery environment setup duration.
3. Enhanced application performance and user experience.
4. Reduction in infrastructure and maintenance costs.
5. Streamlined blue-green deployment solution.
6. Improved availability metrics for the application.
About Virtusa
This project serves as just one example of Virtusa’s successful IaC endeavours. As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, Virtusa possesses specialised infrastructure and cloud migration capabilities, delivering comprehensive services throughout the cloud journey. Leveraging its proficiency in digital technology, Virtusa empowers clients to foster innovation, achieve scalability, and enhance agility by expediting their adoption of Google Cloud through the implementation of industry-leading practices and tailored solution accelerators. With decades of experience and extensive expertise in IaC, Virtusa stands ready to assist enterprises in expediting their cloud transformation journey. Partnering with Virtusa and leveraging IaC capabilities can propel businesses towards swift success in the cloud realm.
