TECHNOLOGY

Confluent unveils HashiCorp Terraform Provider to simplify multi-cloud data streaming

Published

2 years ago

July 22, 2022

Data streaming platform Confluent has released the Confluent Terraform Provider, developed in partnership with HashiCorp, a provider of multi-cloud infrastructure automation software.

The Terraform provider exposes Confluent Cloud APIs for simple, consistent, and automated management of mission-critical data streaming resources, including cloud environments, Apache Kafka clusters, networks, topics, connectors, and more. Now, Confluent says engineering teams can easily integrate data streaming within CI/CD workflows and GitOps processes on AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud, enabling them to launch real-time applications faster and avoid the high operational costs and risks tied to manual resource provisioning.

Ganesh Srinivasan, chief product officer Confluent, said: “The need to stay ahead of customer demands is fueling the shift to technology stacks powered by data streams and cloud technologies.

“With our HashiCorp Terraform integration, organisations get the power of data streaming across all major cloud providers with the simplicity of infrastructure as code and automation. This means developers have safe, reliable access to the infrastructure resources they need, so they can focus on building applications that truly move the needle for their businesses.”

Data streaming is increasingly essential to deliver the real-time experiences today’s customers demand and data-driven operations businesses need. But developers building and launching data streaming applications with open-source Apache Kafka are often blocked, waiting for access to infrastructure resources. Those requests are usually handled by a small team of experts who support the entire business and a highly complex tech stack. These teams can easily get bogged down in time-consuming, manual processes for managing infrastructure, which quickly puts new developments behind schedule. Manual provisioning also introduces high levels of risk, which is unacceptable when data streaming is powering a business’s most sensitive, mission-critical use cases. Integration with a proven tool like Terraform can save time, speed up new releases and add even more security.

Rolando Berrios, director of engineering, Okedo, said: “Helping our customers save time and money with smart, real-time inventory management solutions is dependent upon widespread use of real-time data streaming throughout our entire business.

“With Confluent’s Terraform Provider, we’re able to completely automate our infrastructure deployments as code with no sacrifice on quality or security. With consistent, version-controlled deployments managed through a tool our teams already know, we’re able to move quickly and maintain focus on new, value-add projects.”

The Confluent Terraform Provider gives engineering teams easy access to the full set of data streaming resources they need, ranging from Kafka clusters and private networks to service accounts and ACLs. With provisioning and management of data streaming infrastructure automated throughout all clouds, the benefits of real-time data can scale across the entire business to fuel faster innovation from a wider set of teams. With the new Terraform provider, teams can:

• Reduce complexity and risk with infrastructure deployments managed as code and deployed through automated GitOps integration.
• Increase developer autonomy and productivity with consistent, version-controlled access to data streaming environments, Kafka clusters, Kafka topics, and more.
• Integrate Confluent deployments within existing cloud workflows on AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud using standardised resource management tooling, pipelines, and processes.

“The new, verified Terraform provider for Confluent makes provisioning critical data streaming resources simple and reliable,” said Burzin Patel, VP, Global Partner Alliances, HashiCorp. “It automates deployments within existing CI/CD workflows across all major cloud services so organisations can easily access the real-time data they need for innovation with far less time focused on infrastructure management.”

More New Innovations in the Q3 ‘22 Launch

Confluent’s quarterly launches provide a single resource to learn about new capabilities available on the leading data streaming platform. Other highlights include:

Independent Network Lifecycle Management: One of the biggest challenges faced when scaling data streaming workloads is the ability to provision networking resources efficiently without adding operational burdens. Confluent’s new REST APIs and Terraform support for network lifecycle management promote networks to be a first-class resource, enabling organisations to scale data streaming workloads independent of network connectivity. This lets engineering teams reuse existing network connections for multiple clusters and gain granular access control of network resources through the new RBAC role for network admins, which significantly reduces manual toil.

User Login Monitoring: As a data streaming deployment grows, it becomes increasingly important to keep a close eye on who is accessing a platform and what those visitors are attempting to do with data. Confluent added user login monitoring to its extensive library of auditable events, making potential data breaches easier to spot. Now, security groups can see a full list of all users who successfully log into a Confluent Cloud account. This way, organisations can quickly find the bad actors who would otherwise be hidden within the noise of expected activity. This helps ensure no breaches occur that would expose sensitive data, cause downtime, or tarnish brand reputation.

Tags: HashiCorp Terraforn Provider, streaming

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TECHNOLOGY

Next-gen chips, Amazon Q, and speedy S3

Published

5 months ago

December 1, 2023

Max

AWS re:Invent, which has been taking place from November 27 and runs to December 1, has had its usual plethora of announcements: a total of 21 at time of print.

Perhaps not surprisingly, given the huge potential impact of generative AI – ChatGPT officially turns one year old today – a lot of focus has been on the AI side for AWS’ announcements, including a major partnership inked with NVIDIA across infrastructure, software, and services.

Yet there has been plenty more announced at the Las Vegas jamboree besides. Here, CloudTech rounds up the best of the rest:

Next-generation chips

This was the other major AI-focused announcement at re:Invent: the launch of two new chips, AWS Graviton4 and AWS Trainium2, for training and running AI and machine learning (ML) models, among other customer workloads. Graviton4 shapes up against its predecessor with 30% better compute performance, 50% more cores and 75% more memory bandwidth, while Trainium2 delivers up to four times faster training than before and will be able to be deployed in EC2 UltraClusters of up to 100,000 chips.

The EC2 UltraClusters are designed to ‘deliver the highest performance, most energy efficient AI model training infrastructure in the cloud’, as AWS puts it. With it, customers will be able to train large language models in ‘a fraction of the time’, as well as double energy efficiency.

As ever, AWS offers customers who are already utilising these tools. Databricks, Epic and SAP are among the companies cited as using the new AWS-designed chips.

Zero-ETL integrations

AWS announced new Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, Amazon DynamoDB, and Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for MySQL integrations with Amazon Redshift, AWS’ cloud data warehouse. The zero-ETL integrations – eliminating the need to build ETL (extract, transform, load) data pipelines – make it easier to connect and analyse transactional data across various relational and non-relational databases in Amazon Redshift.

A simple example of how zero-ETL functions can be seen is in a hypothetical company which stores transactional data – time of transaction, items bought, where the transaction occurred – in a relational database, but use another analytics tool to analyse data in a non-relational database. To connect it all up, companies would previously have to construct ETL data pipelines which are a time and money sink.

The latest integrations “build on AWS’s zero-ETL foundation… so customers can quickly and easily connect all of their data, no matter where it lives,” the company said.

Amazon S3 Express One Zone

AWS announced the general availability of Amazon S3 Express One Zone, a new storage class purpose-built for customers’ most frequently-accessed data. Data access speed is up to 10 times faster and request costs up to 50% lower than standard S3. Companies can also opt to collocate their Amazon S3 Express One Zone data in the same availability zone as their compute resources.

Companies and partners who are using Amazon S3 Express One Zone include ChaosSearch, Cloudera, and Pinterest.

Amazon Q

A new product, and an interesting pivot, again with generative AI at its core. Amazon Q was announced as a ‘new type of generative AI-powered assistant’ which can be tailored to a customer’s business. “Customers can get fast, relevant answers to pressing questions, generate content, and take actions – all informed by a customer’s information repositories, code, and enterprise systems,” AWS added. The service also can assist companies building on AWS, as well as companies using AWS applications for business intelligence, contact centres, and supply chain management.

Customers cited as early adopters include Accenture, BMW and Wunderkind.

Want to learn more about cybersecurity and the cloud from industry leaders? Check out Cyber Security & Cloud Expo taking place in Amsterdam, California, and London. Explore other upcoming enterprise technology events and webinars powered by TechForge here.

TECHNOLOGY

HCLTech and Cisco create collaborative hybrid workplaces

Published

5 months ago

November 29, 2023

Max

Digital comms specialist Cisco and global tech firm HCLTech have teamed up to launch Meeting-Rooms-as-a-Service (MRaaS).

Available on a subscription model, this solution modernises legacy meeting rooms and enables users to join meetings from any meeting solution provider using Webex devices.

The MRaaS solution helps enterprises simplify the design, implementation and maintenance of integrated meeting rooms, enabling seamless collaboration for their globally distributed hybrid workforces.

Rakshit Ghura, senior VP and Global head of digital workplace services, HCLTech, said: “MRaaS combines our consulting and managed services expertise with Cisco’s proficiency in Webex devices to change the way employees conceptualise, organise and interact in a collaborative environment for a modern hybrid work model.

“The common vision of our partnership is to elevate the collaboration experience at work and drive productivity through modern meeting rooms.”

Alexandra Zagury, VP of partner managed and as-a-Service Sales at Cisco, said: “Our partnership with HCLTech helps our clients transform their offices through cost-effective managed services that support the ongoing evolution of workspaces.

“As we reimagine the modern office, we are making it easier to support collaboration and productivity among workers, whether they are in the office or elsewhere.”

Cisco’s Webex collaboration devices harness the power of artificial intelligence to offer intuitive, seamless collaboration experiences, enabling meeting rooms with smart features such as meeting zones, intelligent people framing, optimised attendee audio and background noise removal, among others.

Tags: Cisco, collaboration, HCLTech, Hybrid, meetings

TECHNOLOGY

Canonical releases low-touch private cloud MicroCloud

Published

5 months ago

November 28, 2023

Max

Canonical has announced the general availability of MicroCloud, a low-touch, open source cloud solution. MicroCloud is part of Canonical’s growing cloud infrastructure portfolio.

It is purpose-built for scalable clusters and edge deployments for all types of enterprises. It is designed with simplicity, security and automation in mind, minimising the time and effort to both deploy and maintain it. Conveniently, enterprise support for MicroCloud is offered as part of Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro subscription, with several support tiers available, and priced per node.

MicroClouds are optimised for repeatable and reliable remote deployments. A single command initiates the orchestration and clustering of various components with minimal involvement by the user, resulting in a fully functional cloud within minutes. This simplified deployment process significantly reduces the barrier to entry, putting a production-grade cloud at everyone’s fingertips.

Juan Manuel Ventura, head of architectures & technologies at Spindox, said: “Cloud computing is not only about technology, it’s the beating heart of any modern industrial transformation, driving agility and innovation. Our mission is to provide our customers with the most effective ways to innovate and bring value; having a complexity-free cloud infrastructure is one important piece of that puzzle. With MicroCloud, the focus shifts away from struggling with cloud operations to solving real business challenges” says

In addition to seamless deployment, MicroCloud prioritises security and ease of maintenance. All MicroCloud components are built with strict confinement for increased security, with over-the-air transactional updates that preserve data and roll back on errors automatically. Upgrades to newer versions are handled automatically and without downtime, with the mechanisms to hold or schedule them as needed.

With this approach, MicroCloud caters to both on-premise clouds but also edge deployments at remote locations, allowing organisations to use the same infrastructure primitives and services wherever they are needed. It is suitable for business-in-branch office locations or industrial use inside a factory, as well as distributed locations where the focus is on replicability and unattended operations.

Cedric Gegout, VP of product at Canonical, said: “As data becomes more distributed, the infrastructure has to follow. Cloud computing is now distributed, spanning across data centres, far and near edge computing appliances. MicroCloud is our answer to that.

“By packaging known infrastructure primitives in a portable and unattended way, we are delivering a simpler, more prescriptive cloud experience that makes zero-ops a reality for many Industries.“

MicroCloud’s lightweight architecture makes it usable on both commodity and high-end hardware, with several ways to further reduce its footprint depending on your workload needs. In addition to the standard Ubuntu Server or Desktop, MicroClouds can be run on Ubuntu Core – a lightweight OS optimised for the edge. With Ubuntu Core, MicroClouds are a perfect solution for far-edge locations with limited computing capabilities. Users can choose to run their workloads using Kubernetes or via system containers. System containers based on LXD behave similarly to traditional VMs but consume fewer resources while providing bare-metal performance.

Coupled with Canonical’s Ubuntu Pro + Support subscription, MicroCloud users can benefit from an enterprise-grade open source cloud solution that is fully supported and with better economics. An Ubuntu Pro subscription offers security maintenance for the broadest collection of open-source software available from a single vendor today. It covers over 30k packages with a consistent security maintenance commitment, and additional features such as kernel livepatch, systems management at scale, certified compliance and hardening profiles enabling easy adoption for enterprises. With per-node pricing and no hidden fees, customers can rest assured that their environment is secure and supported without the expensive price tag typically associated with cloud solutions.

Tags: automation, Canonical, MicroCloud, private cloud