In today’s era, Digital Transformation is the key for an organization’s success. Businesses are striving continuously to innovate in order to attract new customers and stay ahead of their competition. It is understood that the core objectives of businesses – Revenue Growth & Customer Satisfaction can be very well attained via well planned digital transformation initiatives.
Though organizations around the world have realized the transformative power of digital, majority of them are still struggling to take their transformation initiatives to the next level. The challenge is not only, how to embrace the new tools and technologies for their digital transformation initiatives, but they are also missing on adopting the key ingredients – Cloud & DevOps.
The acceptance of Cloud computing dates long back but the struggle of effectively developing and deploying an application along with managing costs still persists. On the other side, Devops – the engineering culture of unifying software development and operations is too facing challenges as it can be difficult to implement.
All these hassles can be effectively managed and the results from the cloud efforts can be maximized by bringing the Cloud and a DevOps environment together.

Understanding the Cloud – DevOps Relationship

At one end, where cloud is about technology and services, at the other end DevOps is about making development and operations work together for process improvement. Although the relationship between them is often considered confusing but the synergy is extremely effective in enabling businesses achieve their digital transformation goals.

The flexible IT infrastructure in Cloud Computing provides greater business agility to organizations, thereby enabling them to effectively streamline and embed DevOps processes. Hence, Cloud Computing & DevOps complement and intermingle into each other in such ways that regardless of the DevOps path you travel, cloud computing will always be able to help.
Organizations which are willing to adopt DevOps for their Cloud Infrastructure & want to check their readiness before going ahead can do so by taking DevOps Assessment – A solution to help customers adopt the right DevOps strategy with proper planning tool.

Building & Managing Cloud Applications with DevOps

Just like DevOps aims at continuous innovation and faster delivery from development through operations, Companies also need to consider, Cloud Operations (CloudOps) for continuous operations & improvement   but in cloud environments.
Enterprises generally select a cloud platform before ensuring that their organization is DevOps ready. But the fact is that the advantages of building cloud applications using modern DevOps tools can only be reaped only if the DevOps and public/private cloud solutions evolve at the same time.
The agile processes need to be automated using the Cloud DevOps Automation tools. Similarly, the DevOps processes and automation should be extended into public/private cloud.
Though it is not as simple as it might sound, but a process with a series of steps would surely help.

In Conclusion

By utilization of DevOps in the cloud, organizations can derive a huge number of potential benefits including enhanced agility and reduced operational costs. Sinfosys has extensive experience in setting up and managing Devops processes in the cloud. For more details on the expertise, please drop an email at info@sinfosys.co.in.

Learn about our Managed Cloud Services Offerings or reach out to us at info@sinfosys.co.in.

The post DevOps & Cloud – The Essentials for Digital Transformation appeared first on Sinfosys.

According to a report by MarketsandMarkets™ on Managed Cloud Services, “The cloud managed services market size is projected to grow from USD 27.15 Billion in 2017 to USD 53.78 Billion by 2022, at an expected Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 14.6%”.
So, what is the Managed Cloud Services option all about & why are companies moving towards it?
Organizations today run on information and managing that information securely is of prime importance in today’s era. The on-premise data is prone to security threats, costly downtime and data loss and these issues can be effectively managed on the cloud.
Though migrating to cloud from on-premise is seemingly a difficult task, it is easier to implement than other systems and provides lots of advantages to its users. Here are the top 10 benefits of having Managed Cloud Services an integral part of your Cloud Strategy.

1 – Effective Cost Management

Unlike on-premise servers, cloud-managed service reduces costs, as monthly payment needs to be made only for what has been used. With plans that are customizable, businesses can optimize the amount they pay for IT support by only bearing the cost of the setup which is needed.

2 – Centralized Network

A Managed Cloud Service Provider (MSP) manages all the applications and servers in a central data center within the managed cloud network. As a result, remote network users can access centralized data within the same network including virtual services. Also, with cloud, it’s possible to build storage and backup into a centralized network. Hence, this increased network availability helps in increasing business performance.

3- Business Versatility and Agility

Managed Cloud offers versatility, especially for businesses that are looking to expand. With Managed Cloud Services, companies are able to spend more time focusing on their work and growing their business rather than trying to fix the IT issues as these will be taken care by the Service Provider.

4 – Disaster Management & Data Recuperation

Companies that make use of on-premise servers, tend to have many recovery plans if a disaster strikes. On the other hand, Managed Cloud Services ensure that data is safe and secure across all the cloud services and the applications. In case of any disaster, unlike on-premise, the business operations can keep on running with minimum downtime. In case any host fails, cloud servers will benefit from the high availability infrastructure. Resource balancing and fail-over between hardware hosts is automatically controlled at the virtualization level. In addition, there is the ability to maintain and update the hardware and software.

5 – Network Security

Cloud Services use internet as the base network, making it intangible and free from physical threats. Dedicated, secure VLANs, firewalls and IDS/IPS can be put in place for any set of cloud servers – Amazon Web Services Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform, delivering the same highly secure and dedicated network environment. Additionally, losing computers and laptops along with the sensitive data present in them is a concern for on-premise servers. With data stored in the cloud, accessibility comes easy.

6 – Round the Clock Operations

Managed Cloud Services increases accessibility to information with 24-hour functioning. Hence, users are no longer bound to office hours to access their file of interest and hence can work whenever they want.

7 – Automatic Upgrades

On-premise servers are subject to maintenance and security costs due to which companies have to invest a significant amount of their capital in ensuring that their servers remain functional. With Managed Cloud Services, the service provider is in charge of updates and maintenance, freeing businesses from such costs.

8 – Increased Infrastructure Reliability and Performance

With Managed Cloud Service Providers, a robust network infrastructure with 24/7 management can be achieved. They monitor and scan the network to comply with security standards and ensure that the solutions are reliable and sturdy and functioning at optimal levels. Hence, companies that are using these solutions are likelier to trust a larger portion of their data with these systems confidently.

9 – Scalability

No matter how fast company grows, Managed Cloud Services are customizable and scalable enough to fulfill the growing requirements of any business

10 – Better Response Time

With the help of the cloud managed services, you can expect better response times across all the levels of monitoring. Most service providers are capable of accessing, monitoring and repairing any network issue within a short period of time. Hence, businesses can expect quick response times through enterprise-level monitoring and remote cloud services.

Do these points appeal you? If yes, then it’s the time to engage with a Managed Cloud Services Provider and the get the most out of your cloud investment. We at Sinfosys have a dedicated team of Cloud experts with an in-depth expertise and experience.

Learn about our Managed Cloud Services Offerings or reach out to us at info@sinfosys.co.in.

The post 10 Must Know Benefits of Managed Cloud Services for Business Growth appeared first on Sinfosys.

Introduction:

Dockerize may sound like a fancy term at first- but it is not anything to be intimidated by. In simple terms, Dockerize is utility that can help in simplify the running apps in Docker containers. This can be achieved by making use of container environment variables and templates.

Docker and the container are already being flaunted as a revolution, because managing applications in Docker is far easier than managing the applications in legacy way.

As the industry is heading towards Docker adoption, the real challenges are discovered on how to monitor the infrastructure / applications where Docker containers are running.

In this Blog we will explain How to collate the logs from various Dockerized applications and how to monitor the application logs through ELK (Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana) stack along with Filebeat and Dockbeat by using below scenarios.

• Application monitoring :-

Monitoring of Application level logs like Error logs, Info logs, Login Failures, Capturing Geo location, etc.

• Infrastructure monitoring :-

Monitoring of Infrastructure information like Host metrics – such as CPU utilization, Memory utilization, Disk utilization etc.

The following sections of the Blog will provide step-by-step procedure of how the log files can be collated, analyzed and converted into Business useful insights.

Deployment Model

The high level Deployment model is as depicted in the below deployment architecture:

The following points provide high level description of the Deployment model. However, a step by step procedure is provided from the next sections of this Blog.

Launch Two EC2 Instances on AWS cloud

• Install Docker Engine in the first EC2 instance and run the application with Filebeat.
• Install ELK stack in the second EC2 instance for monitoring containers.

1. Install Docker Engine in first EC2 instance and create two Docker containers and deploy different java applications along with Filebeat.
2. Configure the Filebeat.yml file for collecting logs from application and configure to connect Logstash.
3. Configure the Dockbeat.yml file for connecting to Elasticsearch.
4. Run the java applications through a web browser.
5. In second EC2 instance install ELK Stack, then configure the elasticsearch.yml and kibana.yml file for communicate eachother.
6. Write a required logstash.conf file for getting required information related to our containers.
7. Finally monitor the applications by using Kibana

Docker Setup Introduction

Deploying and running any web application like Java or PHP will have it’s own dependencies / pre-requisites like run-time environment, the compatible jar files etc.

On a day to day basis we come across many situations where the application is running properly on the Dev / Test environment and the same application is deployed / ported to a different environment like Staging / Production, the application fails to deploy successfully. In most of the cases, the reason would be either version mismatch, OS compatibility, required deployment files are missing and so on and so forth.

To overcome this kind of situation Docker engine offers a containerization platform to eliminate the above mentioned hurdles and to have a seamless portability and application deployment. Docker supports packaging of application along with Operating System, runtime environment, application related software into standardized containers that include everything that are needed to run the application.

Step 1 – Docker Setup & Configuration:

Pre-requisite is that you should be familiar with AWS cloud and should have an account with AWS (Amazon Web Services) account

1. Login into AWS (Amazon Web Services) Account :- https://signin.AWS.amazon.com/
2. Create Two Ubuntu EC2 instances, and set required firewall rules to control the traffic of instance.
3. Connect instance using Public DNS. It is better to set Admin privileges by using “sudo su” by permanently

$ sudo su

1. Install docker engine on first EC2 instance

$ wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh

Let’s make sure that everything is ok by issuing the following command:

$ docker version

Deploying Application on Container

Get a plain tomcat Docker image from Docker hub by Creating a Docker file (name must be dockerfile) and edit the dockerfile with the mentioned command.

$ vi dockerfile

Add the below mentioned line to the docker file

1. Build the image and tag as “tomcat:latest” or any name.

$ docker build -t tomcat:latest .

1. Build and run the docker container from the docker image “tomcat:latest”

syntax:-

$ docker run -d -p Host_port:Container_port –name userdefined_container_name base_image_name

Example:-

1. Access the tomcat from browser “Instance_public_ip:port”

Example:-

1. Copy the web application from the local system to AWS EC2 Instance, in case f application is available in local system. Open new CLI and type following command.

Syntax:-

$ sudo scp -i location-of-downloaded.pem-file location-of-war-file location-of-AWS-instance:~/.

Example:-

1. Move / copy the application file to Docker container.

Example:-

1. Use the following command to access the Docker Container for make any configuration changes.

syntax:-

$ docker exec -it tomcat-container-ID /bin/bash

Example:-

Docker Hub Registration:-

Docker Hub is a Repository to store Docker images. Docker Hub provides an option to store Docker images as private and public.

• Create Docker account with valid credentials
• Login to Docker hub https://hub.docker.com/login/
• Create new repository and push the own docker image to the repository from EC2 instance.

Step 2 – Filebeat Installation & Configuration:

Filebeat is a log data collector and shipper. For monitoring containerized application install Filebeat on Docker container.

Open https://www.elastic.co/products/beats/filebeat find the latest filebeat and choose .deb file Right click on it choose “copy link address”, and paste it on terminal

$ wget https://artifacts.elastic.co/downloads/beats/filebeat/filebeat-5.1.1-amd64.deb

• Install using the following command

$ sudo dpkg -i filebeat-5.1.1-amd64.deb

• Edit the filebeat.yml and do some configuration modifications which is required

$ vi /etc/filebeat/filebeat.yml

• To start Filebeat automatically when container starts add “service filebeat start” command in tomcat “catalina.sh”

$ vi bin/catalina.sh

• Exit from the Docker Container and commit the changes and build new image

Syntax:-

$ docker commit Tomcat-container-ID DockerID_Namespace/Repository_name:Tag

Example:-

• For pushing the Docker image to Docker Hub repository. Login to Docker Account with secured credentials by following command.

$ docker login

• Push the updated docker image to docker hub

Syntax:-

$ docker push New-Docker-Image:Tag

Example:-

• Now access the application through browser

Example:-

http://10.0.0.9:8080/application_name/

Step 3 – Dockbeat Installation & Configuration:

Dockbeat is used for monitoring Docker daemon. It is a lightweight agent that needs to be installed on EC2 instance where the Docker engine installed. Periodically it reads Docker container statistics and indexes them in Elasticsearch.

1. Download Dockbeat from git hub and paste it on terminal and unzip that.

$ wget https://github.com/Ingensi/dockbeat/archive/v1.0.0.tar.gz

$ tar -xvzf v1.0.0.tar.gz

1. Download executable file from following link using terminal

$ wget https://github.com/Ingensi/dockbeat/releases/download/v1.0.0/dockbeat-v1.0.0-x86_64

1. Give execution permissions to above downloaded file.

$ chmod +x dockbeat-v1.0.0-x86_64

1. Edit dockbeat.yml and configure elasticsearch destination ip address and port number.

$ vi dockbeat-1.0.0/dockbeat.yml

1. Run the dockbeat

$ ./dockbeat-v1.0.0-x86_64 -c dockbeat-1.0.0/dockbeat.yml -v -e

1. Troubleshooting:

Provide permission to following file, if exception occurs in docker.sock.

$ chmod 777 /var/run/docker.sock

Step 4 – ELK Installation & Configuration:

For detailed instructions on how to install Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana, please refer to other article in the website How to get Reliable Log Analytics through ELK?

Step 5- Monitoring through Kibana:

ELK stack helps to monitor application logs and Docker container by collecting data from shippers (filebeat and dockbeat) and create index depends on the logstash configuration. Visualization and Dashboards can be configured and populated by using the log data in Kibana.

1. Below Screen representation shows
   • Application Logs, logs count
   • Memory utilization of containers, Clusters.

Conclusion:-

As Docker adoption is accelerating day by day across various clouds and variety of application stack, so the demand also accelerates for monitoring the application logs and infrastructure logs to get more insights of their businesses.

The post 5 Simple Steps on How to monitor Docker Applications appeared first on Sinfosys.

DevOps is nothing but the methodology that helps in bridging the gap between the developer’s team & the operations team in an organization. The main idea is to help in better collaboration, better communication & the actual goal is to build trust & reduce the friction between the Dev & Ops teams.

“Who must implement DevOps?”

“Do you want to host your product / development onto cloud?”

If so, you are at the right place! Customers ask for the products / development can be delivered briskly & efficiently. If your product / development that is required to release very frequently like weekly, monthly or quarterly are recommended to adapt DevOps to gain a better result.

“What kind of methodology to adopt in order to achieve this?”

Well, we help you to deliver your products in a shortest span using continuous delivery (CD) & to improve the product using continuous integration (CI).

“Continuous Integration does not get rid of bugs, but it does make them to dramatically easier to find & remove them.” — Martin Flower

Code changes that are made by the different team members will be merged together as a single working software, which is known as the integration phase. During this integration phase there are more chances of conflict in the code, which in turn results in the inefficiency of the development.

Following are the benefits of the Continuous Integration (CI):

• Catch issues fast & rectify them in the bud.
• Everyone will be aware of what is happening.
• Automate the build.
• Can build fast.
• No need to wait till the code is reviewed completely.
• CI leads to deliver faster.

Jenkins is one of the powerful & an open source tool that is used to integrate & test the code developed by the different teams to build the product/development faster. The main feature of Jenkins is version controlling capacity & to initiate the build whenever any changes in the code. A source code repository like GitHub, SVN can be configured using Jenkins. Jenkins also supports building tools such as ant & maven.

The other advantages of using Jenkins are:

• Failed builds can be cached at the integration stage.
• An automatic build notification will be sent after every build success or failure.
• Can achieve agile development & test methodology.
• Versioning of build is made easier.
• Tracking bugs & fixing them can be done early.

Deploying on to cloud:

“Do you want to host on to the cloud?”

Leveraging the advantages of the cloud for the products/developments that are developed using the CI is still made easier. Here we provide you the end to end cloud services where you can easily scale & secure your application whenever is required. But, imagine if your application is deployed into the different environments on the cloud automatically? Thanks to the AWS CloudFormation, where with the help of the templates and scripts deploy the built product / solution automatically to the respective environment to the AWS cloud.

“Why should I host on the cloud?”

Cloud is responsible for the tremendous impact on the usage growth of the technologies by the consumers now a days. Technologies such as social media, e-commerce are the happiest business makers due to the vast advantages of the cloud.

Below are some of the advantages of the cloud:

• Can scale up/down your application whenever necessary.
• The latency to access your application/development is reduced drastically.
• It saves your unnecessary expenses on resources.
• Security is the basic feature of the cloud.
• Maintaining 24/7.
• Disaster recovery & auto back-up is an added strength.

Once the product/development is built using Jenkins, the CloudFormation script is invoked & automatically deploys the product/development to the different environments once the product is verified. This continuous process is nothing but “Continuous Deployment”. We can also notify the respective team regarding the dispatch & arrival of the new version of the product/development, which makes the deployment yet more transparent. Once the product/development reaches the production environment, going-live is also made automatic using the same script.

While the integration & the deployment are made more easier & brisk, Jenkins & CloudFormation helps you to concentrate more on the business as well as the improvement of the product.

The challenges vary from customer to customer, and no single DevOps adoption approach works for all the customers. At Sinfosys, we help our customers with a tailored DevOps adoption approach.

The post DevOps – A Reliable & Powerful weapon for Enterprises appeared first on Sinfosys.