Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Multi-Cloud Scripting


AWS Adds Multi-Cloud Scripting to EC2 Run Command Feature

"In late 2015, AWS unveiled the EC2 Run Command feature. It gave operators a single interface for running administrative tasks across a fleet of AWS servers. In June of this year, AWS expanded the scope of the feature to work with servers located in other clouds or data centers.

Using EC2 Run Command, teams can run ad-hoc Linux shell scripts or Windows PowerShell commands, install applications and patch the operating system, regardless of where the instance is located.

The EC2 Run Command works through agent software running on the target machines. This agent, part of EC2 Simple Systems Manager (SSM) service and found on GitHub, is built into AWS Windows images, and available for manual installation on servers running Amazon Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, Ubuntu, and Windows Server. The agent works through an outbound HTTP request, and no inbound ports need to be opened"



Interesting solution that could be applicable for many more situations, like IoT.
Azure also has very similar Agents for managing both Linux and Windows cloud VMs.
That agent is also open source, so it may be technically possible to manage VMs on other clouds.
GitHub - Azure/WALinuxAgent: Microsoft Azure Linux Guest Agent

If or when PowerShell Core becomes available on Linux that may be even better platform.
In particular Azure Desired State Configuration is a very useful feature.

Amazon++

Amazon Ecosystem Lock-In = PRIME + Echo + 2lemetry | Jon Nordmark | LinkedIn