Other Automation Options

Other automation solutions were also investigated. Following is brief summary.

Terraform

Terraform is an open-source infrastructure-as-code tool that is well-integrated both with Azure (including a large library of sample configurations ), and AWS . In addition to the open source version, there are two paid versions that include collaboration, operations, governance, and policy features.

Terraform is an attractive option for the following reasons:

• configurations are maintained in text files with a simple, well-documented format

• open source

• cross-platform

Azure Blueprints

Azure Blueprints were studied as an automation option. Currently, Azure Blueprints may be less than ideal for Enterprise GIS automation. A blueprint can be only be assigned once to each subscription, which would, for example, preclude using a single template to automate a blue / green deployment in production. In addition, a user requires elevated permissions at the Azure management group and subscription level to use blueprints.

At this time, Azure Blueprints are still in preview mode. The Azure Governance team has indicated that they are implementing changes to the way blueprint definitions are assigned to subscriptions, so the issues identified above may be addressed before the initial release.

Azure Runbooks

Azure Runbooks were also studied as an automation option. They have not yet been fully evaluated, pending a meeting with Microsoft on 18 OCT 18.