The cloud is the standard for hosting applications and workloads. However, only a small percentage of organizations realize the full benefits such as cost reduction, enhanced resilience, and new revenue streams. Often, this is due to the complex nature of cloud environments. The HashiCorp Infrastructure Cloud aims to address these challenges, providing a unified platform for managing cloud infrastructure and security resources efficiently.
The Challenges of Cloud Adoption
Cloud environments enable developers to deploy applications instantly using various tools and services. However, focusing solely on application delivery can lead to issues due to lack of visibility and control over the infrastructure and security aspects. A holistic approach that considers the entire application value chain is necessary for successful cloud adoption.
Understanding the Application Value Chain
The application value chain is crucial for successful cloud adoption, encompassing three key segments: Application Lifecycle Management (ALM), Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM), and Security Lifecycle Management (SLM). Each segment requires end-to-end management to ensure efficiency, security, and compliance. ALM focuses on the development and deployment of applications, ILM manages the provisioning and maintenance of infrastructure, and SLM handles the security aspects. By addressing all three segments, organizations can reduce risks, lower costs, and achieve their business objectives more effectively.
The application value chain has three critical segments:
- Application Lifecycle Management (ALM): Covers coding, testing, and deploying applications.
- Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM): Involves provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure using infrastructure as code.
- Security Lifecycle Management (SLM): Focuses on managing the security of applications through identity-based access controls.
Organizations must address ILM and SLM alongside ALM to minimize risks, reduce costs, and meet business objectives effectively.
A Blueprint for Cloud Success
Achieving success in the cloud requires a strategic approach that evolves with your organization’s needs. HashiCorp has developed a proven blueprint based on extensive experience with thousands of customers. This blueprint outlines a three-stage model for cloud maturity: Adopting, Standardizing, and Scaling. Each stage addresses specific challenges and offers solutions to streamline operations, enhance security, and optimize costs. By following this blueprint, organizations can effectively manage their cloud environments, improve collaboration, and fully realize the benefits of their cloud investments.
HashiCorp’s experience with thousands of customers has revealed a three-stage blueprint for cloud maturity:
- Adopting: Initial stage where individual teams use cloud providers in silos. This stage lacks centralized control and governance.
- Standardizing: As cloud usage increases, organizations adopt a programmatic approach, focusing on gaining control over their cloud estate through a centralized platform team.
- Scaling: The final stage involves extending workflows and best practices across the entire digital estate, enabling sophisticated capabilities such as auto-remediation and self-service provisioning.
Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) at Each Stage
Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) is vital for effective cloud adoption, providing a structured approach to provisioning, managing, and scaling cloud resources. HashiCorp’s ILM solutions cater to each stage of the cloud maturity journey, from initial adoption to advanced scaling. At each phase, ILM uses infrastructure as code to ensure consistency, reduce manual errors, and enforce governance policies.
- Stage 1: Adopting: Organizations can provision and manage cloud resources through declarative infrastructure as code, increasing efficiency and reducing manual errors.
- Stage 2: Standardizing: Organizations create and validate standard images and reusable code modules, ensuring consistency and simplifying updates.
- Stage 3: Scaling: Organizations offer preconfigured templates and workflows, enabling developers to automate their application environments and achieve higher productivity.
This approach accelerates productivity, enhances reliability, and supports seamless collaboration across teams, ultimately enabling organizations to optimize their cloud operations and achieve their strategic goals.
Security Lifecycle Management (SLM) at Each Stage
Effective Security Lifecycle Management (SLM) is essential for protecting cloud environments throughout their maturity journey. HashiCorp’s approach to SLM automates secrets management, enforces security policies, and enables just-in-time authorization, ensuring robust security from the initial adoption phase through to standardization and scaling. At each stage, SLM integrates seamlessly, offering dynamic credential management, policy enforcement, and automated remediation to minimize risks and enhance security.
- Stage 1: Adopting: Organizations manage and rotate secrets automatically, reducing manual effort and risk.
- Stage 2: Standardizing: Continuity is ensured through dynamic credentials and session recording, helping troubleshoot issues and scan for unmanaged secrets.
- Stage 3: Scaling: Credentials are automatically rotated and revoked, and encryption policies are unified, bolstering security with minimal manual intervention.
This structured approach helps organizations maintain a strong security posture, streamline compliance, and safeguard their critical assets in the cloud. SLM enhances security by automating secrets rotation, enforcing policies, and enabling just-in-time authorization. Centralizing security management simplifies compliance and reduces risks.
The HashiCorp Infrastructure Cloud
The HashiCorp Infrastructure Cloud represents a paradigm shift in managing cloud infrastructure and security. Built on years of industry-leading experience, it provides a cohesive platform that addresses the full lifecycle of cloud resources, from provisioning to security management. By integrating Infrastructure Lifecycle Management (ILM) and Security Lifecycle Management (SLM), the HashiCorp Infrastructure Cloud enables organizations to streamline their operations, reduce risks, and enhance productivity. This unified approach ensures that businesses can fully realize the benefits of their cloud investments, driving innovation and efficiency across their digital estate.
HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) Benefits
The HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) offers a unified SaaS solution for managing cloud infrastructure and security, simplifying cloud operations and enhancing productivity. HCP provides streamlined onboarding, eliminating lengthy provisioning processes, and integrates workflows to handle complex use cases effortlessly. By offloading infrastructure costs and applying automatic upgrades, HCP ensures organizations stay current without disruptive changes. It also scales according to business needs, guarantees high availability through multiple clusters, and provides global geographic coverage. Centralized services unify user identity and billing, further streamlining cloud management.
- Streamlined Onboarding: Quick setup without lengthy provisioning workflows.
- Integrated Workflows: Supports complex use cases like image management and privileged access management.
- No Infrastructure Costs for ILM and SLM: Offloads infrastructure management to HashiCorp.
- Automatic Upgrades: Access to the latest features without disruptive upgrades.
- Scalability: Scales with customer needs.
- High Availability: Ensures data availability and recovery through multiple clusters.
- Geographic Distribution: Datacenters in North America and Europe for global coverage.
- Common Central Services: Unified identity and billing interface across products.
Products for Infrastructure Lifecycle Management
HashiCorp offers a suite of tools designed to streamline the entire lifecycle of cloud infrastructure. These products leverage Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to automate provisioning, management, and scaling, ensuring consistency and efficiency. Key offerings include Terraform for comprehensive infrastructure provisioning, Packer for image creation and management, Waypoint for simplifying deployment workflows, and Nomad for versatile compute orchestration. Each tool is crafted to integrate seamlessly, providing robust solutions that reduce manual errors and accelerate time-to-market, enabling organizations to manage their cloud environments with greater control and reliability.
HashiCorp offers several products for ILM:
- HCP Terraform: Provides infrastructure as code provisioning and management across cloud, private datacenter, and SaaS environments.
- HCP Packer: Manages the lifecycle of images used in provisioning pipelines.
- HCP Waypoint: Creates an internal developer platform with predefined workflows (currently in beta).
- HashiCorp Nomad: Manages application scheduling for containers, binaries, and virtual machines.
Products for Security Lifecycle Management
HashiCorp’s suite of Security Lifecycle Management (SLM) products is designed to protect sensitive data and streamline security processes across cloud environments. These tools use identity-based security workflows to manage secrets, credentials, and access controls efficiently. Key products include Vault for robust secrets management, Boundary for secure remote access, and Consul for service networking. Each solution integrates seamlessly into existing systems, offering automated security features that minimize risks and ensure compliance, thereby enabling organizations to maintain a strong security posture throughout their cloud operations.
HashiCorp’s SLM solutions include:
- HCP Vault: Manages secrets with an identity-based approach.
- HCP Boundary: Secures remote user access with identity-driven controls.
- HCP Consul: Provides service networking for secure communication and automation across environments.
Conclusion
Adopting cloud solutions promises innovation and market responsiveness but requires a new operating model. The HashiCorp Infrastructure Cloud, built on extensive experience in cloud infrastructure automation, helps organizations achieve successful cloud adoption. It addresses ILM and SLM challenges, maximizing cloud investments while managing costs and mitigating risks.
The HashiCorp Infrastructure Cloud is essential for enabling platform teams and ensuring cloud programs are implemented correctly, providing a solid foundation for the digital transformation journey.
Original Article Source: What is The HashiCorp Infrastructure Cloud? by Chris Pietschmann (If you’re reading this somewhere other than Build5Nines.com, it was republished without permission.)
