Automating Cloud Services with Open Source Tools

Depending on who you ask, DevOps is either the best thing to come along since sliced bread or the biggest load of hooey ever foisted on the IT sector. But while it’s understandable to have an allergic reaction to yet another cool technology that will Save Us All and still have time to bake cookies (with sprinkles), there is some real substance within the notion of DevOps … provided you can get past the hype.

In full-on hype mode, DevOps seems to suggest that development and administrative teams are somehow at odds and that DevOps will part the waters that lie between these two groups and align both groups around common business goals.

Putting that aside, the genuine benefits of DevOps are typically a bit more mundane, yet no less useful: You have this thing called cloud computing, and to really make use of it properly, the machine resources in the environment have to be able to be deployed and otherwise administered on an automatic basis. This automated management is a big part of what cloud computing really is: A collection of virtual machines without such controls is just a virtual datacenter...