It’s time to invest in a cloud management suite!

Often, moving to a multi-cloud deployment is a step in the right direction. After all, multi-cloud deployments come with the same benefits as a single cloud. The difference is they don’t have some of the risks, such as service interruptions and vendor lock-in. It’s a smart investment for most mid-market and enterprise-level organizations.

Additionally, with multi-cloud you can pick and choose capabilities of one cloud over the other which can provide a necessary differentiator.

But here’s the thing — it’s not all a bed of roses. You see, it’s possible to lose control of your cloud deployments if you don’t have the right tools in place. The complexity of the multi-cloud can bring about a lack of visibility as your operations grow. As a result, monitoring can become a nightmare. Hence, the benefits accrued from the move to the multi-cloud may become elusive. This is where a cloud management suite, also referred to as a cloud management platform (CMP), comes in.

The tipping point varies from one organization to another. And here’s why: it depends on the complexity, size, and governance and security requirements of the deployment. So, how do you know when it’s time to invest in a third-party cloud management platform? We’ve hashed out what you need to look for below.

You Might Need A Third-Party Cloud Management Suite If: 

Developers Are Disgruntled

Are your team’s developers frustrated with resource management and provisioning? That’s your sign. The first people to feel the impact of an overly complex cloud environment are developers. Why? The time it takes to allocate resources to apps frustrates them.

Now you’re wondering, “How can I tell when developers are frustrated?”

The answer is simple: Pay attention to the number of e-mails you get from your developers requesting access to resources, such as computing and storage. Are there too many? Do you still use the native cloud management tools from your cloud provider? Then you might have a problem. Typically, you’ll have to line them up and assign them to staff members who specialize in the target cloud platform. Ultimately, this can turn into a massive bottleneck in the overall productivity of your organization.

With a third-party CMP in place, it’s possible to avoid this situation. You see, you can empower developers by giving them the right to access and allocate resources directly without a need to learn native cloud provisioning and management tools. As a result, you’ll save tons of time because developers no longer have to seek and wait for approvals.

There’s an Increase in Performance Complaints

Have you received several performance-related complaints from cloud end-users? Consider implementing a cloud management suite. Usually, these complaints are because applications aren’t receiving the right amount of cloud resources. So, they can’t execute tasks effectively.

Additionally, a cloud management platform can help you understand the bottlenecks and if your users are leveraging the right resources for the right workloads. This can help you balance your cost vs. performance benefit as well.

There’s Increased Risk

If you’re struggling to manage all your resources in a multi-cloud architecture, you risk falling victim to a security breach. Accountability is usually the first to go out the window when you lose control of your cloud assets. After all, you can’t tell who is responsible for what resource and what he or she is doing with it.

A third-party cloud management platform can help you regain control. You can track users and the resources they’re provisioning at any one time. You’ll also be able to see what steps the user has taken to secure these resources. Also, you can schedule periodic health checks to help identify resources that are more risk-prone.

Too Many Mistakes are Being Made

Is your IT team making too many rookie mistakes after deploying your IT system to the multi-cloud? You might want to look into using a CMP. The abstraction and automation it brings, frees IT from dealing with manual, tedious tasks. Consequently, there’ll be fewer mistakes and you can set the right parameters in place to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

You’re Experiencing Cost Allocation Problems

As your multi-cloud deployment grows, it’ll be harder to identify who’s responsible for your monthly cloud bill’s costs. This can account to thousands or tens of thousands of dollars being wasted without the right reports in place. A cloud management suite gives you cost visibility across all cloud providers. This way, you can track who uses what services and how much it’s costing the organization. You can also set relevant cost metrics to pin-point resources that need your immediate attention. Plus, you can reel in the underutilized resources using these metrics and reports.

CloudBolt platform has helped hundreds of customers streamline their cloud environments. One customer has said, “CloudBolt is highly customizable and the reports look amazing which are very easy to understand. It is very fast and efficient and very easy to use. We have saved a ton of time after using this platform a huge thumb up.”

Schedule a quick demo of the CloudBolt platform and see how it can help you manage your cloud environment more efficiently.

Container orchestration tools can help users manage containerized apps and resources they need during development, testing, and deployment. These tools orchestrate the complete app life cycle based on given specifications. There is a variety of container orchestration tools available to your organization. Today, we’ll look at some of the best orchestration tools for 2020.

Kubernetes (K8s)

Google developed Kubernetes in 2014 as an open-source container orchestration system. Since then, Cloud Native Computing Foundation has adopted it as a flagship. Kubernetes is a portable, cluster-managed tool backed by Google. It allows containerized applications to run multiple clusters for better organization and accessibility. It has become the leading de-facto standard of container orchestrator. It has been widely adopted by all managed container solutions as it is easy to use, works across infrastructures, and empowers developers more.

Reasons for Choosing Kubernetes

Download The Only Kubernetes Starter Guide You’ll Ever Need today.

Google Kubernetes Engine

This cloud orchestration tool comes with the Google Cloud Platform. It has all the functionality of Kubernetes, including scaling, deployment, and management of containerized apps. However, it’s faster and more efficient.

Reasons for Choosing Google Kubernetes Engine

Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

This Kubernetes service manages, secures, and scales containerized applications in the Amazon Web Services (AWS). It eliminates the need for the Kubernetes control panel. EKS clusters run in AWS Fargate across multiple locations. If you have Kubernetes-based applications, you can move them to Amazon EKS without having to change any code. EKS works seamlessly with many Kubernetes tools.

Reasons for Choosing Amazon EKS

Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

Azure Kubernetes Service is an open-source container orchestration tool that brings Kubernetes to Microsoft Azure. You can use it to deploy, manage, and scale Docker containers and other container-based apps in a cluster environment.

AKS offers provisioning, scaling, and upgrades of cloud resources as needed without downtime in the cluster. And the best part is you don’t need any specialized knowledge in container orchestration to manage AKS.

Reasons for Choosing AKS

Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS)

ECS runs apps in a managed cluster of EC2 instances on Amazon Web Services (AWS). ECS powers services, such as AWS Batch, Amazon.com’s recommendation engine, and Amazon SageMaker. It guarantees availability, reliability, and security.

Reasons for Choosing ECS

It is important to understand your technology needs, preferences, and capabilities before you choose from these available options. If you want to control every part of this ecosystem you can start with Kubernetes as an open source product. However, if you prefer to let someone else manage the environment you can lean more towards a managed solution. Choose smart, start small, and iterate as needed!  

Experience the leading hybrid cloud management and orchestration solution. Request a CloudBolt demo today.

Security is critical for a successful IT environment. How important? An insecure environment can lead to a complete loss of data, customer abandonment, or brand erosion. Alternatively, if you have a more secure environment your organization doesn’t show up in a news article. According to Gartner, data and cyber-related risks remain top worries for executives.   

At CloudBolt, we understand this and work stringently to ensure our platform is a security enabler and our customers have secure hybrid cloud environments. This goal has led us to offer role-based access control and granular reporting among other things.

Now with the CloudBolt v9.3 release, we make it easy for our customers to use single sign-on (SSO) and Security Assertion Mark-up Language (SAML2) vendors of choice. Assuming that hybrid cloud IT will stay secure and is someone else’s headache is dangerous. Be bold and make the right choice for your environment. 

Enabling SAML2 Using CloudBolt 9.3 

Our 9.3 release makes it easy for you to use a SAML2-compliant identity provider you trust. SAML is a standard that covers federation, identity management, and SSO. It helps you centralize management of users and give them access to various solutions they plan to use. It does this through authentication, authorizations, and maintaining user logs. Now you can enable SAML2 from CloudBolt very easily.  

Additionally, you can configure SSO through a guided experience using CloudBolt. This detailed step-by-step configuration helps you avoid any manual errors or find certain important information missing. You can also use the SSO vendor of your choice, including service providers such as Okta, OneLogin, Google Authentication, etc. You can consistently roll out SSO for your entire environment i.e. on-prem and public clouds. Thus, when your users are using a self-service catalog you can rest assured that they are making safe choices. Plus, you can keep bad players at bay. 

CloudBolt Makes SSO Easy for Secure Environments 

CloudBolt simplifies SSO and SAML2 service consumption from the cloud management platform. This ensures you are securing your hybrid cloud environment in less time and without manual errors. As a result, you can spend more time innovating and consuming hybrid IT with more control.  

I am thrilled to announce the general availability of CloudBolt 9.3 that will help enterprises consume IT services seamlessly. We define our roadmap and strategy working closely with our customers and understanding what is important to them. It is our customer-first attitude that helps distinguish us from our competitors. I want to thank our customers for all their input towards 9.3. Let’s jump right into what’s new in the CloudBolt platform.

Improved Navigation For A Better User Experience

We have enhanced CloudBolt’s user navigation to make the platform more intuitive, help onboard new users quickly, and to drive business value faster. All updates are made at the top-level navigation for better interaction and learn quickly about various sections of the platform. 

Derive More Value From Your Microsoft Azure Environment

Microsoft’s Shared Image Gallery (SIG), helps customers easily manage, share, and distribute VM images within and across multiple Azure regions. Now users can consume SIGs directly through their CloudBolt platform to drive business efficiencies and focus more on strategic activities. They can manage these images globally by grouping and versioning them while sharing them across subscriptions and tenants using Azure Role-Based Access Control (RBAC). Additionally, accelerated networking and management of enterprise-level Azure environments are easy to consume from the CloudBolt platform. Thus, making CloudBolt your single portal for all things Azure. 

Stay Secure With Simplified SSO/ SAML2 Setup

With this new release, CloudBolt has simplified Single Sign-On (SSO) configuration for customers. This configuration provides a guided experience for easier setup. Also, CloudBolt integrates with any SAML2 compliant identity provider to support SSO. This release provides additional support for Okta and more choices to follow in subsequent releases.

Manage Veeam, SolarWinds IPAM, and Cisco UCS Environments From One Single Platform

Cloudbolt’s Veeam UI extension enables users to view a server’s backups stored in Veeam and restore them to AWS or Azure.  It allows users to access functionality provided by Veeam without having to learn how to use Veeam itself. This gives users complete assurance and peace of mind. 

CloudBolt now integrates with SolarWinds IPAM. This ensures that when a user provisions a server using CloudBolt, an IP address gets assigned to that server directly. Thus, eliminating any manual intervention needed and making the process more efficient. Additionally, deleting the server ensures the IP address is released back to be reused later. 

With the new CloudBolt blueprint self-service provisioning of Cisco UCS service profiles are just a few clicks away. Thus, CloudBolt becomes even more extensible and helps you save time. 

CloudBolt has invested in making the customer’s hybrid cloud journey simpler, cost-effective, and better governed. Learn more about these CloudBolt features here.

Schedule a quick demo with our solution experts to see CloudBolt platform in action.

As organizations grow, they develop a risk of losing control over what they have built so far. As a nimble growing organization with fewer employees, it is easier to set control guidelines that employees follow. However, as you grow and IT becomes more decentralized it is difficult to achieve the right level of control unless you enforce governance policies on employees. 

Setting up governance practices is an always-evolving process. It needs to be forward-looking yet help you manage your current environment. There are certain low-hanging mistakes that you can avoid easily as you plan for better governance. Let’s dive into those.

Shadow IT only happens to the company next door

It is a very common pitfall to assume this: “Shadow IT will never happen to us. It is a myth and my organization is safe and under control.” 

However, you should know that shadow IT does not happen only with public cloud resources. It can be a result of using SaaS offerings or any software that IT does not have a handle on. Research from McAfee highlights that shadow IT cloud usage is 10X the known cloud usage.

There is a practical way you can address this problem. With proper governance, you can provide agility without losing control of the environment. It is important that the IT teams coach their internal customers on how to stay vigilant and avoid shadow IT. This might sound easier said than done. However, with proper rigor in place, you can curb shadow IT easily over a period of time. 

Security is someone else’s headache

This is a common misconception that only IT is responsible for security. When business consumes any service they are an equal partner in security. IT will enforce security norms wherever it is possible. However, users need to be careful about the services that they are using. Phishing attacks, malware, and viruses can create easy entry gateways hackers can exploit as well. 

When in doubt, first reach out to your IT to confirm if you can use a particular service. Do not download any third-party software that is not approved by your IT team. Phishing attacks are getting more difficult to track. Train yourself and your teams to identify phishing attacks before they happen. Plus, make sure you use two-factor authentication where possible. This adds a second security layer on top of just using a password. Use phrases that are difficult to guess, alpha-numeric keys, and capitalized letters when creating passwords. These are simple yet powerful tips that can save a disaster. You do not want to land up on the front page of a magazine for wrong reasons. So, help your IT organization by embracing security best practices. 

Cost is not important for governance

Another key thing people forget is to include cost under the governance umbrella. However, governance is a process for safeguarding yourself. If you overlook cost, it can prove disastrous and might result in wasting your budget on unnecessary services. Also, not having an understanding of who is spending your money, and on what, can lead to an accountability issue. 

Having a good solution that gives you insight into your expenses is always a better idea. As your team’s IT usage grows it becomes difficult to track costs through a spreadsheet. Therefore implementing a proven cost solution is key. You need a solution that can help you with the cost of not just your data center but also your public cloud, SaaS, and other resources. Also, do not pay a premium for a cost-only solution. Leverage a solution that gives you additional features that your growing IT organization needs to drive agility and governance. 

Avoid sticker shock in the cloud era. Download our eBook to learn how.

Only IT is responsible for governance

Another misconception is that since IT is deploying governance practices, only IT is responsible for it. Governance is a collaborative effort and no one party is solely accountable for its success or failure. IT owns the implementation part, and is responsible for making it more seamless across services you are using. It is an enabler for you and your organization. However, it is still a joint initiative and remains everyone’s responsibility. 

Only new innovations are part of governance

This is another common mistake that occurs in organizations. They only include new services that they are consuming under governance. For some reason, it is assumed that old services are already well-governed or that they do not need any additional governance. This mistake can be detrimental for organization of any size. 

You need to use governance as an all-encompassing umbrella. One simple way to get this ingrained in your teams is to form a team responsible only for security and governance. This makes it easy for the team to account for everything and work with everyone towards a common goal. As you plan to become a software-driven organization, ensure you recognize the need for security and governance. It is not something that you can take lightly. 

In summary, governance is very important for every organization. It can help you avoid mishaps that are easy to spot and also address any future grave mistakes that you were not aware of. Plus, it needs to evolve with your organization and it only helps when it is a joint effort across teams. 
CloudBolt, a leading cloud management platform, has all these features and it can help you on the governance journey.

CloudBolt has helped hundreds of organizations to embrace governance while staying agile and focused.

As you begin to adopt a hybrid cloud model, how you think about resources must change. In private cloud environments, you have already paid for the hardware, software, etc. However, in the public cloud, you are consuming and paying for everything by the pay-as-you-go model. 

Your accounting model, and how you think of your IT budget, must now change. On one hand, you do not want to spend everything on Day One or even lose your budget by not using it. Hint: buying reserved capacity can help you utilize your budget in an optimal way. 

Your finance team expects you to report on your capacity, usage, and performance differently since they want to keep a tab on everything. In fact, finance and IT teams need to partner in this journey as you redefine your value to your own business and IT consumers. 

Reliance on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

For better management of your hybrid cloud, use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to measure success. You need to be more proactive and not reactive on every front. This will help you not only realize the planned savings, use your budget efficiently but also integrate new technologies effectively for your business. For example, some of the KPIs you can use for your environment are:

CloudBolt For Complete Visibility 

Gaining complete visibility is one of the most basic and important milestones you should work towards as you move to a hybrid cloud environment. You need to understand your environment through different lenses (i.e. as a whole, by groups, applications, users, etc.). It is easier said than done, especially since you get data from your providers in a disparate format that may be difficult to consume and comprehend. 

You need a tool that can help you understand not only the broad strokes but also the nuances. It should also become a single-pane-of-glass for your team even with different sources and data types. For example, data from your AWS invoice, or data center information about hardware, software, heating, cooling, etc. That’s a lot of information to maintain in a worksheet. You need a reliable tool that can scale as your environment grows. 

CloudBolt provides comprehensive visibility and reporting capabilities for your private and public cloud environments. It provides a variety of reports and dashboards that you can use to gain granular insights into your organizations, applications, or users. You can also customize these reports further to slice and dice the same information in the most relevant format. The following image shows a dashboard for your environment which you can further customize (by groups, servers, owners, etc.). 

Example below is focused on the cost of servers. It is focused on all the groups for the month of March 2020. However, you can further categorize it for a particular group or application of your choice. This gives you the power to compare costs across groups or applications over a period of time. You can email this report to your finance team or export this as a comma-separated value (CSV) report for integration with existing tools if needed. 

CloudBolt simplifies cost management across clouds, data centers or other environments from a single platform.

To schedule a quick demo to see the cost features in action, click here.

A penny saved is a penny earned. Simple enough? Well, the same applies to your hybrid cloud environment as well. 

The more you save, the more money is freed up to try something new, or for that critical project that you have been pushing back for some time now. 

In this post, we will take a look at six simple things you can do to save on your hybrid cloud costs. Many of them are primarily applicable to the public cloud since you have already paid for the datacenter resources. However, 1GB saved in the data center is 1GB earned. Let’s jump right in. 

Zombie resources are still alive

Zombie resources get created when customers spin up resources such as virtual machines, or storage in public clouds and then forget about its existence. This can happen as resources get provisioned by mistake, for trial purposes or as resources get deployed in the wrong environments (production instead of dev, test). It can also happen thanks to shadow IT, as users use their corporate cards and completely forget about the provisioned resources.

While zombies can drain your IT budget, controlling them needs rigor. For example, once a month you should look into your resources and spot ones that are no longer needed. You can also set automated weekly/biweekly policies to find and destroy these zombies. Of all the other items, zombies are easier to spot and take care of if you follow a routine. 

Resources are kept ON 24/7

This is similar to you keeping the lights on in your garage for the entire night without noticing them. And just like electricity, the public cloud uses a pay-what-you-consume model. Thus, if you spin up all the resources and don’t turn them off when not in use (such as weekends or weeknights) you’re still paying a high price over a period of time without even realizing it. If you’re running a big team or have lots of applications, this can multiply quickly if you do not keep a tab on it. 

This is a very common mistake. While in the data center most resources are kept always on, in the public cloud that results in wastage of money that was easy to save. Pushing owners to turn off their resources when not in use is an easy solution. You can use reports and dashboards to understand the usage and spot the underutilized resources. This will not only help you save but will also affect your KPIs around resource efficiency. 

Hint: KPIs help you track resource usage/performance very easily. We will talk about this in the next blog post focused on cost. 

Unattached resources left orphaned

In a public cloud as you deploy certain resources such as virtual machines, the required storage is also deployed with it. Yet, as you spin down your virtual machine, the attached storage that came with it is left running. This means you have resources you may not be using, or that you don’t know exist. This can eat up into your bottom line as you keep using public clouds. Just imagine the impact if you’re a global company and don’t have the right measures to control this cost.

This needs extra attention. Developing reports and processes to check all the unattached objects is a healthy start. You can also drive financial transparency through a show back report. You can show the user how much money is getting spent on resources that are left unattached. Plus, you can give IT admins the ability to wind these resources down if they are left unattached for a certain period of time. 

Over-provisioning resources

Old habits die hard. If you’re coming from a data center environment, your developers and users might be provisioning more resources than they actually need. This might be a habit formed to avoid the delays in getting the required resources when they need them. Or this might be because they don’t need to pay for those resources. As you take these habits to the public cloud, they lead to a burning hole into your IT budget. 

In any case, you need to know how well utilized your resources are. For example, if resources such as storage are underutilized you should move to a less expensive tier of storage. You can do this by checking the resource usage by the peak, average and lowest usage. This will give you enough information to make conscious decisions to save more money. 

Limited accountability

Some organizations have the right intention behind empowering their developers. They want to move faster and disrupt industries. However, if you don’t have the right level of accountability in the environment, you’ll never find out who is having a party at your expense. This is commonly found in start-ups in stealth mode or rapidly-growing companies. 

You can only control what you can measure. It’s important to have the right tools in place to gain granular visibility of your environment. As a next step, develop KPIs that will help you set alert points. These KPIs will further help you drive more accountability that can help you control the cost.

Disaster recovery snapshots kept forever

It’s good practice to account for things that can go wrong. For example, taking snapshots to mitigate any disaster is critical especially if you’re using the public cloud for the first time. However, when these snapshots are kept for a long time (12 to 24 months), they cost a lot and can become outdated quickly. The worst part is you’re still paying for it. 

Keeping snapshots can be very helpful when things fall out of place and you need to keep going as opposed to starting from scratch. I have spoken with countless CTOs who sleep well because they have a disaster recovery strategy in place. However, a simple yet effective practice is to decide how long you want to backup your snapshots. Irrespective of where these snapshots are backed up, you are using resources. So, you should come up with a rule that anything older than a certain number of months would be deleted forever.

The time period to backup information will be influenced by which industry you belong to and if you have any regulations you need to follow. This monthly practice will keep freeing up resources you can use for something more strategic or for those in-house projects that need resources.  

In this post, we discussed six practices that can help you with cost savings in both public and private clouds. Remember: you are accountable for your environment. You can take some simple steps, save money, and free up more resources for your sandbox projects. In the next blog, we will cover some KPIs you can use to keep a tab on your costs.

Experience the leading hybrid cloud management and orchestration solution. Request a CloudBolt demo today.

Infrastructure as Code (IaC), as we have written about previously, is the process of replacing manual efforts and time required for IT resource management and provisioning by simple lines of code. IaC is being adopted by developers across organizations of all sizes to deploy resources quickly with a reduced management overhead. Resources can be scaled and deployed anywhere based on need and access.  

Terraform as an option for IaC

One of the key players in IaC space is HashiCorp’s Terraform. Terraform has been leveraged by enterprise customers as well as mid-market companies who want to transform their IT environment. It offers an open-source based solution for companies that want to empower their developers.

Solutions for Terraform and CloudBolt Customers

Joint Terraform and CloudBolt customers tell us their developers love the power of Terraform for infrastructure provisioning. However, IT operations teams want a platform that provides complete visibility and control. IT teams want a platform that is easy to use, does not have a steep learning curve and provides levers to control resources better. For these organizations, we have developed two key options that our customers can use.  

With the first option, through a new third-party plug-in for CloudBolt, users can now call and invoke a service action in CloudBolt simply by using Terraform. Developers can write their code straight into Terraform plans. Once they deploy that code it invokes an action in CloudBolt which finally invokes the service needed. It’s as simple as that. This option is focused on developers who want to continue using Terraform as the infrastructure management platform. By using CloudBolt in this process, IT admins maintain complete resource visibility and can support day-2 operations. 

With the second option, you can invoke a call into Terraform from CloudBolt blueprints to deploy the service that you need. This means you do not have to sign into the Terraform Command Line Interface (CLI) and you can take actions from the CloudBolt blueprints directly. Day-2 operations continue to be managed the same way as you would manage other hybrid cloud resources using CloudBolt.  

CloudBolt currently supports discovering virtual machines of the following resource types (built by Terraform providers):

I am very excited about both these options and the value they will bring to customers who want to leverage Terraform while leveraging the unparalleled governance capabilities of the CloudBolt platform.

If you want to see this in action, schedule a quick demo with our experts and they would be happy to showcase our Terraform support to you.

I am very happy to announce the general availability of CloudBolt version 9.2. In this release, you can empower IT and developers to deliver more value to the business while putting in less effort. You can simplify how a user can deploy their entire container-based applications and the supporting Kubernetes cluster anywhere. 

You can accelerate your Infrastructure-as-Code journey by using Terraform plans to initiate actions through CloudBolt in a hybrid cloud environment. Finally, you can innovate rapidly through CloudBolt integrations with IBM Cloud, IBM Cloud for Government, VMware Cloud on AWS and Red Hat OpenShift.

Let’s dive deeper into these features and see how you can benefit from them.

Simplify deployment of Kubernetes clusters and applications 

It is difficult to deploy and manage the Kubernetes clusters. Learning how to do it and then deploying Kubernetes clusters manually for every application is time-consuming and error-prone. An innovative enterprise deploying hundreds or thousands of applications in a short span can find doing this repeatedly even tougher. How can this be done quickly and with complete control? 

CloudBolt now enables users to deploy multi-node Kubernetes clusters for their containers environments with just a few clicks. Users can also deploy container-based applications into the provisioned Kubernetes clusters with ease. For instance, you can code and test multi-node applications easily by deploying them in the Kubernetes clusters from the CloudBolt platform in just minutes. Once testing is complete, the entire environment can be shut down with a click or brought back up again to test new iterations through the catalog. 

In other words, Kubernetes cluster deployment and management that used to take hours to deploy and hours/days to plan can now be done in just minutes. Thus, you can deliver value to your customers faster and get back to more strategic initiatives. 

Accelerate cloud journey using Terraform calls into CloudBolt 

Managing different tools in a multi-cloud world is a big challenge and can lead to management challenges like tool versioning, security settings, etc. Plus, everyday there are new tools getting announced. Do you have the bandwidth and the resources to manage the tools yourself? 

Through a new third-party plug-in for CloudBolt, users can now call and invoke a service action simply by using Terraform. Automating infrastructure actions like provisioning through Terraform plans was never this easy. This helps users stay consistent, track the resource usage and be more efficient while avoiding manual errors. They can also use CloudBolt blueprints to invoke actions into Terraform if that is a preferred option. 

CloudBolt platform also allows users to take day 2 actions like deleting resources. To simplify further, we have made the open-source code for this plug-in accessible from the GitHub repository. 

Provision IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud for Government resources with a few clicks

Do you spend hours deploying IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud for Government resources manually? Do you find it both time-consuming and cumbersome?

CloudBolt now provides new resource handlers for IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud for Government through simple blueprints. This integration makes it efficient to provision new services quickly in both the IBM Cloud and IBM Cloud for Government from the CloudBolt catalog. You can stay agile and deploy to the cloud of your choice with CloudBolt. 

Provision to VMware Cloud on AWS through self-service IT

Provisioning workloads through VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS is not easy and has a steep learning curve. Managing both vCenter and AWS is not possible for everyone as they might not have time or the required skill sets.

Now, simply manage and provision VMC on AWS resources (such as compute, storage) using CloudBolt resource handlers. Migrate and manage workloads in VMC on AWS from one single portal without the need to manage two different cloud environments. Once in AWS, users can manage their resources through CloudBolt. We also provide an option of leveraging API support for this feature. 

Manage Red Hat OpenShift efficiently With CloudBolt blueprints

Have you tried using Red Hat OpenShift and faced challenges around integration, management, and automated actions?

CloudBolt’s new OpenShift blueprint allows users to discover, create, and delete OpenShift projects on pre-defined OpenShift clusters. Now manage OpenShift projects, groups objects (i.e. Pods, services, etc.), policies, constraints (i.e quotas), and service accounts through the CloudBolt catalog.

We would love to show these features in action and make your hybrid cloud journey simpler. Request a short demo today.