Self-Learning Series Part 3: Using Automation to Scale and Streamline Operations
Sun, 05 Nov 2023 12:54:00 -0000
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Edge devices offer businesses across industries the opportunity to elevate their operations in an unprecedented way. Each edge device that is added to operations comes with multiple management challenges.
The two main challenges businesses constantly need to address are:
- The resources needed to deploy edge devices are not always readily available
- The time needed to manage edge devices is not always feasible
If the purpose of these edge devices is to deliver data and improve efficiency, the platform that manages them should match these goals.
Additionally, the struggle to keep IT and OT functioning seamlessly is compounded by the need for edge devices to be deployed, monitored, and updated without creating bottlenecks or unnecessary repetitive tasks.
Managing these distributed systems, especially in locations that don’t have technical personnel, must be simple, scalable, and easily repeatable. Systems must be fundamentally zero-touch once plugged in and powered on.
Therefore, eliminating operational complexity at scale via a centralized management platform would require zero-touch deployment and onboarding, and automated operations of infrastructure and applications from edge to multicloud are essential.
Dell NativeEdge is the edge operations software platform that will help enterprises simplify their edge environments by automating edge operations and enforcing zero trust security.
This blog explores how automation with NativeEdge helps simplify the operational processes, allowing for OT and IT to streamline tasks and increase edge device efficiency.
Imagine these possibilities with automation:
- What if you could consolidate all siloed solutions and make it easier to manage and scale them using consistent, repeatable processes?
- What if you could set up security controls across the edge one time, then enforce them automatically without IT intervention whenever you deploy more applications and devices?
- What if you could orchestrate all your applications, third-party or home-grown, from a single catalog, across any number of devices or locations, using blueprint templates?
- As your edge infrastructure expands, what if you could deploy and provision new devices automatically with all the required workloads?
- What if you could also push out patches and upgrades consistently and at scale?
Dell NativeEdge makes all these possible.
Through the automation of routine and repetitive tasks like onboarding devices, orchestrating application workloads, and managing them at scale, recent analysis suggests the NativeEdge platform can speed up application lifecycle management at the edge 22 times faster than current processes.1 This means a large-scale edge implementation that may take 100 or more hours to deploy could be completed in under five hours with Dell NativeEdge.
Automation’s Impact on the Whole Lifecycle Management
Reduce Human Intervention
NativeEdge dramatically simplifies operations through deeply integrated automation processes to streamline edge deployment and operations at scale without relying on IT expertise in the field. NativeEdge does so with centralized management, zero-touch deployment and onboarding, and automated operations.
Error-free Processes
Automating the provisioning and deployment processes enables developers to request and access the necessary resources and environments without relying on manual intervention from IT operations. This self-service approach accelerates development cycles and reduces the time required to set up and configure new environments.
Achieve Faster and More Reliable Software Delivery
Creating tools and workflows that automate tasks like deployment, testing, and monitoring helps reduce human intervention and ensures consistent and error-free processes. This aligns closely with the principles of DevOps implementation, where development and operations teams collaborate closely to achieve faster and more reliable software or hardware delivery.
Simplified Operations
Through the Dell NativeEdge platform, automation simplifies edge operations by providing centralized control and management of distributed edge devices and infrastructure. This simplification leads to increased operational efficiency, reduced manual intervention, improved reliability, and better utilization of edge resources. These advantages are particularly crucial in edge computing scenarios, where resources are distributed across various remote locations and need to function reliably and with minimal human intervention.
Leveraging Infrastructure as Code (IaC)
Imagine you have edge devices on a fleet of boats. Without automation, if you wanted to update the application version, you would have to send a DevOps specialist to each boat, which would take ages and raise costs astronomically. Taking a step back, if you want to find out what is wrong with the edge device, how long will it take to figure it out and how long would it take to repair it so the device is up and running properly?
NativeEdge leverages IaC to automate application provisioning, deployment, and lifecycle management on NativeEdge-enabled Devices as well as on other infrastructure with virtualized or containerized environments.
To understand how we can leverage IaC, let’s make sure we understand some basic terminology:
- Infrastructure as code (IaC): The managing and provisioning of infrastructure through code instead of through a manual process. Using IaC, configuration files that contain your infrastructure specifications are created, which makes it easier to edit and distribute configurations.
- Blueprint: a set of documented best practices, guidelines, and processes for implementing DevOps principles within an organization. A blueprint, in the context of automation, can be a valuable tool to facilitate the design, implementation, and management of automated processes.
Using blueprints is a powerful way to streamline infrastructure and application deployment, ensure consistency, and reduce the risk of errors in your software development and deployment process.
A common tool for creating and managing blueprints is IaC. An example on this could be using frameworks in Ansible for infrastructure provisioning, and configuration management tools like Puppet or Chef for application configuration.
Following our example above of updating an application on devices installed on a fleet of boats. You can leverage automation with Dell NativeEdge, and blueprints can facilitate the process. There are two routes to create blueprints:
- Internally write code or configuration files that define your blueprint. This code should specify how to set up and configure infrastructure components (servers, databases, load balancers) and application components (web servers, microservices, databases), and then upload it to NativeEdge.
- Alternatively, you can use the NativeEdge catalog which includes ready-to-use blueprints provided by Dell or written by independent software vendors (ISV).
Note: Components of a blueprint can often be reused in various contexts. For example, you can use the same blueprint to deploy similar microservices in different parts of your application.
Once you choose the blueprint you would like to use, it provides an option to deploy the updated application using the blueprint on all the devices running the old version across the entire fleet of boats with just a few clicks in NativeEdge. You don’t need to know how to create the VM receipt, or how to run a playbook, or how to install it. All you need to know is how to click install, and the rest is automated.
All these features in NativeEdge allow for a simplified operational process to update the edge device’s application on the fleet of boats in less time and with less technical expertise on hand. Similarly, we can apply these benefits to retail stores, manufacturing factories, or smart cities.
Conclusion
NativeEdge can manage your entire application lifecycle through automation tools. It helps deploy apps on any infrastructure, including public and private clouds. It is a reliable DevOps tool to speed up the building, deployment, and management of software, apps, and microservices without sacrificing operational efficiency or security.
1Estimated: Based on 2023 study of edge operations by GLG Research on behalf of Dell Technologies and estimates from test deployment of NativeEdge (Avg. of 100 responses from IT practitioners).
Additional Resources
To learn more about NativeEdge Application Orchestration, click on the following link:
This blog is a part of a self-learning series. For more information on NativeEdge, go to: