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HashiCorp, founded in 2012 by Mitchell Hashimoto and Armon Dadgar, is a well known infrastructure automation solution company with the aim of automating hybrid cloud management processes, including application development, delivery, and operations. Over the years, HashiCorp has released a variety of open source and enterprise-supported hybrid cloud automation solutions. Below are the Hashicorp toolsets which are widely available for enterprise solutions
Image management has been a fundamental prerequisite for virtual or physical system provisioning. Traditional image automation solutions leverages baselines or golden images were manually build and maintained. However, human errors introduced at the image-build stage could lead to configuration drift in the provisioned service. HashiCorp Packer is an open source tool for creating golden images for multiple platforms from single source configuration thereby solving problems with manually created images. Packer lets you automate the build of golden images. It works with tools like ansible to install software while creating images. It uses configuration files along with the concepts of builder and provisioners to spin up, configure an instance as a golden image. The configuration code can be changed in case of introduction of a new state element (addition of a new agent) or during updation scenarios (patching, hardening) of golden image and is used to create an updated image without human intervention. The following are the key advantages of Packer solutions.
Accelerated image creation and update process: Packer helps create and update multiple images belonging to multiple clouds or multiple OS types within minutes. You don’t have to wait for the administrator to create/update manually, which can take hours or even days.
Support for multiple providers: Packer supports multiple providers and platforms, so you can manage identical images across your hybrid cloud environment with the same standardization and consistency level.
Reduction in human error–induced inconsistencies: Using a codified approach for managing images, you can remove any inconsistencies or configuration drifts in your environment.
Terraform is an IaC (infrastructure as code) tool that allows users to define a desirable infrastructure definition in a declarative language. Using terraform the infra components within the environment can be deployed and treated as a code in terraform's configuration file that you can version, share and reuse. HashiCorp Terraform has its own configuration language called HCL (HashiCorp Configuration Language). An HCL file always ends with *.tf. HashiCorp also supports the JSON format for configuration files. It’s the user’s decision on whether to use JSON or HCL to write Terraform code. HCL is widely used because of its simplicity and complex knowledge of target infrastructure technologies.
HashiCorp Terraform is available in the following three modes. • Terraform CLI (open source) • Terraform Cloud • Terraform Enterprise
The following are the key benefits of using HashiCorp Terraform.
• Accelerated hybrid cloud service provisioning: Terraform enables accelerated provisioning of services across the hybrid cloud, covering more than 500 technologies.
• State management: Terraform allows tracking services for changes or configuration drifts. This enables governance of service configuration beyond the provisioning phase of the service lifecycle.
• Planning and testing services: Terraform enables the planning and testing of services before the provisioning or modification stages, allowing users to safely and predictably manage the service lifecycle.
• Consistency and reduction in human errors: Using a codified approach to managing the service lifecycle, you can remove any inconsistencies or configuration drifts in your environment.
HashiCorp Vault is leveraged for storing and securely accessing secrets via API keys and password. Secrets are defined as any form of sensitive credentials that need to be controlled; they are used to unlock sensitive information. Secrets can be stored in passwords, API keys, or SSH keys. Vault stores secrets for authentication and authorization. Protecting secrets and access for automation is of primary importance. HashiCorp Vault solutions make it easy to manage secrets and access by leveraging the API and a user-friendly interface. You can monitor detailed logs and fetch audit trails on who accessed which secrets and when. User authentication is via a password or by using dynamic values to generate temporary tokens that allow access to a particular path. Policies can also be defined using HCL to determine which user gets what level of access.
HashiCorp Nomad is an easy-to-use workload manager that enables users to schedule tasks and deploy applications in a containerized or non- containerized infrastructure. It allows you to write code and build software using declarative infrastructure as code.
HashiCorp Consul is a multiple–data center service mesh solution that provides the capability to govern application service communication using a control plane. It also offers service discovery and health checks. It leverages a secure TLS protocol to establish mutual TLS connections. A service mesh allows you to control communication between different application components or between multiple applications. A service mesh leverages the IaC concept to define a communication policy. It typically uses a network proxy or sidecar concept for governing communication between application services. Data communication patterns help developers optimize service interaction and performance. For example, a service mesh can monitor the amount of time it takes to reconnect to access the application service during unavailability. This can help developers redefine the waiting period before an application service tries to reconnect.
One of the fundamental challenges developers face is the consistency of the development environment used for writing code. Multiple solutions are available on the market, including VirtualBox, VMware Workstation, and Docker. Hypervisor platforms like VMware, KVM, and Hyper-V are typically used for setting up developer workstations; however, manual administration makes it tedious to manage configuration requirements for each application team which results in no consistency between different environments and introduces configuration drift due to manual intervention. HashiCorp Vagrant enables you to build and manage a developer’s environment using a workflow-driven approach that leverages the power of infrastructure as a code. Using its integrations with various platform technologies, the developer environment is configured using a consistent, repeatable, and accelerated approach. From a developer’s perspective, all the required software, utilities, and environment configurations can be applied to the environment using Vagrant’s file configuration. It enables application team members to use the same standard platform for development. Vagrant is supported on multiple platforms, enabling developers to focus on development using their favorite software and tools without worrying about the underlying platform.
In modern times, especially in the wake of COVID-19, there is a paradigm shift toward identity-based access. With most businesses, applications, and infrastructure users working remotely, organizations cannot rely on a network perimeter to secure access to resources. HashiCorp Boundary provides identity-based access to resources by using popular identity providers for authentication and authorization to human users. Using integration with popular identity providers like Microsoft Azure Active Directory, Okta, and PingFederate for authentication, Boundary enables role-based authorized access to target services. This removes the dependency of tracking the end user by using a physical IP address. User access can now be defined using policies stored in a version-controlled system, ensuring secure access to hybrid cloud services and applications with automated governance.
As modern infrastructure becomes more complex with the rise of public cloud IaaS and PaaS services and container/microservice/serverless- based applications, it’s difficult for developers to keep track of deployment approaches in every platform (VM-based configurations, YAML files, Kubectl, schedulers, etc.). HashiCorp Waypoint enables developers to define the flow of how an application is built, deployed, and released across platforms. Waypoint is not a package manager or replacement of solutions like Kubernetes. It enables the abstraction of build and deployment complexities using codified flow, which is versioned controlled. Waypoint leverages build packs to build applications for various languages and frameworks, which can be stored as artifacts. These artifacts can be deployed on various platforms, leveraging either IaaS or PaaS services. With a Waypoint solution, you can create a workflow to deploy application components that use other solutions from HashiCorp, such as Packer (for defining baseline image), Terraform (for defining desired state configuration), Vault (for managing secrets), Nomad (for application orchestration), or Consul (for managing Service to service connectivity).