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A REST API automation strategy for DevOps

IT Factory

Article from ADMIN 46/2018

By Torsten Volk

Making resources available through REST APIs breaks down the automation silos that cater to the different IT and development environments and sets up an application-centric automation approach.

Modern IT topics such as DevOps, container management, and the hybrid cloud require IT automation as a basis. Interfaces between IT and development teams are particularly crucial when it comes to delivering optimized applications, which calls for a state-of-the-art automation strategy that aligns communication and collaboration across these interfaces. Of importance, however, is the degree of IT automation: In typical companies, you can find automation silos in the classic infrastructure and application management areas, which means that host, storage, network infrastructure, firewall, compliance, databases, hypervisors, and applications are often managed separately.

Naturally, different automation approaches exist, usually comprising a collection of scripts, server management tools, configuration management software, application release management platforms, monitoring, batch job scheduling software, and cloud automation solutions. In the past, when software releases only took place once a year and all applications had their permanent place, this approach could work very well.

The DevOps Catalyst

With the advent of DevOps and its continuous release pipeline, the individual automation silos are often overloaded because fast release cycles require too much coordination. The constant movement of applications from the development to the test and production environment is difficult, as well. In a hybrid environment, you rub against the additional complexity of coordinating different server, storage, and network platforms in the data center and in the cloud. For example, it often makes sense to set up development environments in the public cloud, but then operate the production environment in your own data center. DevOps, therefore, needs a new automation approach.

The user is ultimately not interested in why their application displays errors or responds too slowly to mouse clicks, so a

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