2015-04-13

The need for cloud tools for infrastructure automation is two-fold. First, DevOps engineers, IT professionals, and SysAdmins need to automate as many day-to-day tasks as possible so they have more time to design and engineer for business. Second, automation makes managing diverse, complex environments possible so that organizations can keep up with the demand for fast, flexible services. Whether you work with a private cloud, a public cloud, or a hybrid cloud, you will benefit from cloud infrastructure automation tools.

Because cloud infrastructure encompasses so many areas of IT and cloud engineering, we here at ProfitBricks have searched for cloud infrastructure automation tools that can help cloud infrastructure engineers, IT professionals, and SysAdmins in nearly every niche of the field. We have included cloud infrastructure automation tools that run the gamut from automatic test configuration to automatic monitoring and management. You also will find everything from open source to enterprise tools in our list of the best cloud infrastructure automation tools, which is presented here in no particular order.

After you read this list, consider stopping by DevOps Central – our DevOps community to discuss any of the cloud tools that you like or ask questions to the community.

1. Fabric
@pyfabric



An automation tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment and SysAdmin tasks, Fabric is a Python library and command-line tool. Providing a basic suite of operations for executing local or remote shell commands, Fabric also common is used for uploading and downloading files and for its auxiliary functions that include prompting the running user for input.

Key Features:

Create a Python module containing one or more functions and then execute them via the fab command-line tool

Run a task on one or more servers, once it is defined

Import Fabric’s components into other Python code

Cost: FREE

2. Cuisine



A set of functions specifically for use with Fabric, Cuisine makes it easier for cloud engineers and IT professionals to write portable administration and deployment scripts. Abstract common administration operations, including file/dir operations, user/group creation, and package install/upgrade, are possible with Cuisine.

Key Features:

Small, easy to read, single-file API

Covers file/dir operations, user/group operations, and package operations

Text processing and template functions

Cost: FREE

3. Chef
@chef



One of the most well-known cloud infrastructure automation tools, Chef delivers configuration management and continuous delivery. By turning infrastructure into code, Chef helps cloud engineers and IT professionals automate infrastructure build, deployment, and management.

Key Features:

Recipes (resuable definitions) automate infrastructure tasks

Recipes use resources (building blocks) that describe a piece of infrastructure; use the resources included in Chef or create your own

Chef servers store recipes and your other configuration data and determines whether nodes are out of date – if they are, the Chef client runs them on the recipes to update the nodes

Cost:

Essentials: FREE – Manage 10,000+ nodes from a single server, cross-platform management, searchable blueprint of your infrastructure, access to premium features, 8×5 support, and more

Subscription: Starts as low as $6/node/month – All Essentials plan features, plus an account manager

Enterprise: Contact for a quote – All Subscription plan features, plus unlimited 24×7 support, success engineering, cookbook build coaching, and access to the Chef product team

4. Crowbar

With an Apache 2-license, the Crowbar Project has two versions of its framework under active development. Crowbar enables users to build complete deployments and transform physical nodes from bare-metal into a ready-state production cluster quickly and easily.

Key Features:

Specific applications include Ceph, Hadoop, OpenStack, and others

Crowbar v1: The original Chef-integrated provisioning tool primarily maintained by SUSE for OpenStack deployments

OpenCrowbar: Supports a much broader set of operating systems, applications, configuration managers, and hardware (physical, virtual, and containers)

Cost: FREE

5. Puppet
@puppetlabs

Puppet is the configuration management system that enables cloud engineers and IT professionals to define the state of their IT infrastructure and then automatically enforces the correct state. Puppet automates time-consuming manual tasks.

Key Features:

Handles just a few servers or thousands of physical and virtual machines

Automates the software delivery process at every step

Ensures consistency, reliability, and stability

Fosters collaboration between SysAdmins and developers for better-designed code

Cost: FREE trial for up to 10 nodes; Contact for a quote

6. Pallet
@palletops

Pallet is an agile cloud development tool that treats infrastructure as code. Specifically, Pallet provides IT professionals with a platform “for agile and programmatic automation of infrastructure in the cloud, on server racks, or directly on virtual machines.” This cloud infrastructure automation tool also delivers a maximum amount of customization.

Key Features:

run on demand from anywhere, even over a remote REPL connection

Any machine running bash and SSH can be used with pallet, without requiring special dependencies to be installed

Use to start and stop nodes, configure nodes, run administration tasks, and more

Cost: Contact for a quote

7. Juju
@ubuntu

The cloud infrastructure automation tool that helps you build complete cloud environments with a few commands, Juju is a fast and simple solution. Juju orchestrates services to assist in deploying an OpenStack, a workload on public or private clouds, or right on bare metal using MAAS.

Key Features:

Works alone or with tools such as Puppet and Chef

100 charms and growing in the Juju charm store for your cloud-based enterprise applications

Create services along with their dependencies, connect them, and integrate them quickly and easily

Manage services and apply changes after the initial deployment with simple, one-line commands

Cost: Contact for a quote

8. Ansible
@ansible

Automate apps and infrastructure simply with Ansible’s configuration management and continuous delivery. Agentless and powerful, Ansible is the all-in-one system for app deployment, configuration management, and orchestration.

Key Features:

Greatly reduce automation time with Ansible’s simple IT automation language

Uses SSH instead of agents for increased efficiency and security and decreased management time

With portal mode, you can delegate automation jobs to non-Ansible users

Cost: Contact for a quote

9. (R)?ex
@RexOps

(R)?ex deployment and configuration manager is a cloud infrastructure automation tool that also delivers lifecycle management. With Rex, IT professionals and cloud engineers can “automate everything, relax anytime.”

Key Features:

Seamlessly integrates in your running environment

Easy to use and extend

Written in Perl so it is easy to learn

Apache 2.0 license

Uses SSH, so no agent is required

Cost: FREE

10. SaltStack
@SaltStackInc

Orchestrate and automate CloudOps, ITOps, and DevOps with speed and scalability using SaltStack. Systems and configuration management software, SaltStack is easy to use, scalable, and fast.

Key Features:

Real-time automation

Get running in seconds

Manage tens of thousands of servers

Control and communicate with servers in milliseconds

Useful dynamic infrastructure communication bus for orchestration, remote execution, configuration management, and more

Cost: Contact for a quote

11. Distelli
@distelli

Distelli aids you in deploying any application to any server in minutes. IT professionals, SysAdmins, and cloud infrastructure engineers spend more time on code and less time on deployment with Distelli.

Key Features:

Works with any piece of code on any server

Group servers into environments based on role, geography, cloud provider, and more

Releases are automatically created every time you deploy with Distelli, so you always know which versions of your software are deployed on each server

Easily integrates with the tools you already use

Cost:

FREE – 2 servers, unlimited deployments, unlimited releases, and email support

Project: $150/month – 10 servers, unlimited deployments, unlimited releases, and email support

Startup: $375/month – 25 servers, unlimited deployments, unlimited releases, and email support

Growth: $750/month – 50 servers, unlimited deployments, unlimited releases, and email support

Enterprise: Contact for a quote – 100+ servers, unlimited deployments, unlimited releases, and 24/7 phone support

12. CFEngine
@cfengine

CFEngine is the cloud infrastructure automation tool that allows for “IT automation at WebScale.” Automating large-scale, complex, mission critical IT infrastructure is a much easier task with CFEngine because it helps you ensure compliance and consistent global changes.

Key Features:

Written in C with industry-leading execution time of less than one second

A highly-rated security record

A mature solution known for its stability

Scalability that handles even the largest and most complex configuration changes quickly

Available in both open source and commercial editions

Cost:

Community Edition: FREE – Partial compliance and reporting

Enterprise Edition: Contact for a quote – Graphical interface, support, full compliance and reporting

13. Foreman

SysAdmins easily automate repetitive tasks with Foreman, an open source project that delivers complete lifecycle management for physical and virtual servers. Foreman is a cloud infrastructure automation tool that also allows you to quickly deploy applications and proactively manage tasks and applications, from provisioning and configuration to orchestration and monitoring.

Key Features:

Discover, provision, and upgrade your entire bare-metal infrastructure

Create and manage instances across private and public clouds

Group hosts and manage them in bulk, regardless of location

Review historical changes for auditing and troubleshooting

Cost: FREE

14. Commando
@commando_io

Cloud engineers and SysAdmins can save hours when they use Commando for cloud infrastructure automation. Easily manage servers online without installing agents and increase productivity by giving people the power to run commands on servers using Commando’s web interface.

Key Features:

Native SSH

Infrastructure transparency with a full audit trail

Automatically import servers across cloud providers

Run commands on servers automatically when you push to GitHub

Cost:

FREE – For a single server

Pico: $12/month – Add 3 servers and 2 users, GitHub integration, API access, and user log in audit

Nano: $24/month – Add 5 servers and 3 users, scheduling, GitHub integration, API access, 2x longer execution limit, and user log in audit

Micro: $49/month – Add 10 servers and 4 users, plus all Nano plan features

Mega: $99/month – Add 20 serves and 5 users, plus all Micro plan features

Contact for a larger plan or a higher level of support

15. Rundeck Runbook Automation
@Rundeck

Open source software, Rundeck is a cloud infrastructure automation tool that helps cloud engineers, IT professionals, and SysAdmins automate ad-hoc and routine procedures. Also for data center automation, Rundeck allows you to trigger jobs by the scheduler or on demand using the web interface or API.

Key Features:

Share standard operating procedures

Implement as a runbook automation tool to improve control over daily operations activity, reduce errors, improve transparency, and reduce mean time to repair

Set access controls so you can share procedures with others inside or outside of your team

Custom workflows, end-to-end orchestration across local or remote servers, cross-platform, and more

Cost:

Rundeck: FREE – Orchestrate actions across nodes, fine grain access controls, logging/audit trail, and job scheduler

Rundeck PRO – All Rundeck features, plus professional support, enterprise tested configuration, supporting tooling, and upgrade path to newer versions

First Rundeck PRO Instance: $5,000/year

Each additional Rundeck PRO Instance: $2,500/year

Rundeck PRO HA – All Rundeck PRO features, plus multi-node cluster, active standby, and centralized log store

Rundeck PRO HA: Contact for a quote

16. Bcfg2

Built to help administrators construct an accurate, comprehensive specification, Bcfg2 “supports gentle reconciliation between the specification and current client states.” With Bcfg2, SysAdmins create a consistent and reproducible description of their environment.

Key Features:

Offers visualization and reporting tools to aid in daily administrative tasks

Copes with manual system modifications

Enables the construction of complex change management and deployment strategies

Fairly portable and runs on Ubuntu, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, and many others

Cost: FREE

17. Glu
@pongasoft

An open source deployment and monitoring automation platform, glu takes a “declarative approach.” SysAdmins and IT professionals describe and model what they want so that glu can get to work.

Key Features:

Computes the set of actions to deploy/upgrade your applications

Ensures that it remains consistent over time

Detects and alerts you when there is a mismatch

Deploys and monitors applications to an arbitrary large set of nodes efficiently, with minimum to no human interaction, securely, and in a reproducible manner

Cost: FREE

18. PontusVision
@PontusVision

From Pontus Networks, the core services automation system PontusVision, assists IT departments in controlling the configuration, deployment, and monitoring of applications. PontusVision delivers industry-tested templates for automating the deployment of software and hardware.

Key Features:

Customers either create their own templates or use existing industry-tested templates

Covers four main areas: Design, configure, deploy, and manage

Two monitoring tools: Ultra-messaging (UM) Monitor and Round-Trip-Time (RTT) Monitor

Cost:

FREE Edition

Enterprise Edition: Contact for a quote

19. Tstconfig
@softwareloop

Ensure your system’s integrity by allowing Tstconfig to test the configuration files for you. Hosted on GitHub and distributed under an MIT open source license, Tstconfig is a cloud infrastructure automation tool that is handy and reliable.

Key Features:

Looks at the configurations, checks that certain properties have the value you want them to have, and reports any discrepancies

Tests a large number of configuration files automatically

Suitable for solo SysAdmins, teams of SysAdmins, and others who want to enforce good configuration standards

Cost: FREE

20. Dell Cloud Manager
@DellCloudMgr

Dell Cloud Manager is an enterprise cloud management solution that provides agility, governance, and choice. Acting as a single point of control for implementing governance policies and controls, Dell Cloud Manager unifies the management of all of your accounts across all of your clouds.

Key Features:

Leverage the Cloud Manager API to integrate additional automation tools and other backend systems

Available as SaaS to manage public clouds or may be installed on premises or hosted and managed by Dell for managing public, private, or hybrid clouds

Supports a number of clouds

Cost: Contact for a quote

21. AutoMate
@NetAuto

AutoMate is an award-winning automation platform, and AutoMate 10 enables you to build solutions without writing any code. AutoMate also features easy-to-use interfaces to manage your automation footprint and create powerful tasks.

Key Features:

AutoMate 10 integrates with virtual and cloud-based computing environments

AutoMate Task Administrator provides a central management hub for the administration of all automation assets

Easy-to-use, drag-and-drop, intuitive interface for developing automation applications

Uses triggers as the responsive solution for automation

Cost: Contact for a quote

22. Cloudify
@CloudifySource

Cloudify 3 delivers easy automation of applications, even those that are the most complex, throughout their entire lifecycle. This cloud infrastructure automation tool monitors applications’ progress in the could and scales them when needed.

Key Features:

Deploy the same application in your own data center or on the cloud of your choice

Continue to use your favorite automation and configuration management tools

Monitor, manage, and scale your application, regardless of the topology or technology stack

Cost: FREE or contact for purchasing the Premium Edition

23. CA Technologies Automation
@CAinc

CA Technologies Automation helps accelerate business processes, reduce business costs, and drive business innovation by providing IT automation capabilities across virtual and physical infrastructure, applications, and services. CA Technologies offers several products for automation, including CA AppLogic Cloud Platform, CA Process Automation, CA Workload Automation AE, and others.

Key Features:

Intelligent, IT automation that responds to constantly changing business demands

Streamlined and accelerated transition to cloud computing

Exceptional speed, productivity, visibility, and control

24. Cisco Prime Cloud Automation
@CiscoSP360

Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud software is a comprehensive solution for deploying and managing cloud-based services. IT professionals and cloud engineers “can enable highly secure, on-demand, and automated IT operations for cloud computing” with Cisco Prime Cloud Automation.

Key Features:

Delivers the critical foundational layer for holistically deploying and managing cloud-based services

Offers policy-based controls for provisioning virtual and physical resources

Improves agility, flexibility, and speed with a self-service portal, an orchestration engine, and advanced cloud management capabilities

Cost: Contact for a quote

25. Qualys
@qualys

A cloud infrastructure automation tool rooted in policy compliance, Qualys is “the next generation in compliance and risk management.” Providing automation and global scalability in the cloud, Qualys performs automated security configuration assessments on IT systems throughout your network and cuts compliance costs.

Key Features:

Automated, high volume scanning to identify and track assets everywhere

Repeatable and trackable compliance process

Automate ticketing and reporting for efficient risk reduction

Find and prioritize configuration lapses to stay in continuous compliance

Cost: FREE trial available

Policy Compliance Enterprise Edition, 1 Year subscription: Contact for a quote – Unlimited users, IPs, scanners, and scans

Policy Compliance Express Edition, 1 Year subscription: Contact for a quote – Unlimited users and scans, max of 3,072 IPs (internal only), and maximum of five scanners

26. BladeLogic Automation Passport
@BMCSoftware

BladeLogic Automation Passport is the portal to their most successful automation customers’ best practices. This strategic framework utilizes your IT automation efforts to maximize your business value and competitive advantage.

Key Features:

Develop a roadmap to roll out automation initiatives with increasing business value in a phased approach

Get best practice recommendations from years of experience with BMC’s most successful automation customers

Apply specific strategies to appropriate solution areas, including provisioning and configuration, patching and compliance, cloud management, and DevOps

Cost: Contact for a quote

27. Cobbler
@cobblerista

Designed to simplify server deployments by automating repetitive actions and recycling existing work through templating, Cobbler is a build and deployment system. Rapidly set up installation environments and get assistance with provisioning, managing DNS and CHCP, more with Cobbler.

Key Features:

Automates the process of provisioning servers from bare metal, or when deploying virtual machines onto various hypervisors

Maximize code reuse with templates for managing DNS and DHCP and those given to various distributions

Relies on a system of snippets, or small chunks of code, that can be embedded in other templates

Cost: FREE

28. Sprinkle
@crafterm

A software provisioning tool, Sprinkle helps you build remote servers. Sprinkle allows for a maximum amount of flexibility regarding how to install software because it supports many different installer types.

Key Features:

Defines that language as concisely as possible for installing software

Supports many different installer types for flexibility

Supports dependencies between packages, so you can specify prerequisites that need to be installed in order

Extendable in many ways, including in its deployment of commands to remote hosts

Cost: FREE

29. ruxit Virtualization Monitoring
@ruxit

ruxit is SaaS application monitoring and analytics for DevOps. SysAdmins, cloud and DevOps engineers, and IT professionals get a full picture of virtualized environments, plus determine how your virtualization configuration impacts your application services and end user experience with this single solution.

Key Features:

Connect the dots between the dependencies of the vCenters in your datacenter, the processes that run on them, and your applications

Automatically analyzes application problems and pinpoints their root causes in your virtualization and application layers

Automatically learns the baseline performance of your application, including response times, error rates, and behavior under load, for backend series and user experience at the browser level

Adjusts to your infrastructure changes automatically so you don’t have to adjust your dashboards or monitoring configurations

Cost: First 1,000 hours of monitoring are FREE; Contact for a quote

30. Cirba
@Cirba

With Cirba, SysAdmins and cloud engineers get software-defined infrastructure control that removes risk from the core of virtual and private cloud operations. “Make your private cloud smarter with Cirba” and rest assured that your infrastructure control is balancing and right-sizing your cloud infrastructure with a combination of policy, predictive analytics, and automation.

Key Features:

Demand-driven approach to infrastructure optimization

Ensures perfect alignment between application requirements and compute, storage, and network resources

Provides new levels of strategic visibility, efficiency, and control

Cost: Contact for a quote

31. QualiSystems
@QualiSystems

QualiSystems provides agile infrastructure automation for DevOps, converged infrastructure, test lab, and more. With QualiSystems, DevOps and cloud engineers get DevOps orchestration and automation solutions that increase agility, productivity, and cost savings for data centers, converged infrastructure, and software-defined networks.

Key Features:

CloudShell creates self-service clouds from hybrid, cross-domain infrastructure

TestShell automates continuous integration and infrastructure testing

Quali automates heterogeneous environments from bare metal to public cloud, development to deployment, and legacy to cloud and SDN

Cost: Contact for a quote

32. Mist.io
@mist_io

Mist.io puts “cloud management in your pocket.” Mist.io enables you to combine clouds and bare metal servers so that you can optimize spending, security, performance, and more. Control from everywhere and monitor everything with Mist.io.

Key Features:

Send commands securely from your phone or tablet

Get actionable alerts

Set automated responses

Use the API, get the source, and write custom plugins

Cost:

Lite: FREE – Unlimited managed servers, create, reboot, and destroy servers, filter and tag into groups, and send commands from anywhere

Basic: $39/month – All Lite plan features, plus monitoring and automation for 5 servers, 5 monitoring rules per server, and 1 week data retention

Startup: $149/month – All Lite plan features, plus monitoring and automation for 20 servers, 10 monitoring rules per server, and 1 month data retention

Enterprise: Contact for a quote – All Lite plan features, plus monitoring and automation for all of your servers, unlimited monitoring rules per server, and unrestricted data retention

33. Scalr
@scalr

Design and manage resilient scalable infrastructure for applications deployed across public and private clouds with Scalr software. The Scalr Cloud Management Platform gives engineers the ability to focus more on creating customer value and less time solving cloud problems by delivering precise control and increasing efficiency through autoscaling.

Key Features:

Extensible software

Access multiple clouds through a single, unified user interface

Give more control and responsibility to engineers

Reduce time to market, improve cost effectiveness, enforce infrastructure security, and deploy multi-cloud infrastructure

Cost: FREE trial available; Contact for a quote

34. RDist
@magnicomp

From MagniComp, RDist is an open source program that maintains identical copies of files over multiple hosts. Preserve the owner, group, mode, and mtime of files, plus update programs that are executing  with RDist.

Key Features:

Use with SSH to perform secure and encrypted updates

Supports automatic system configuration using the GNU autoconf program, which allows RDist to compile on numerous Unix/Linux-based systems

Does not need to be setuid “root”

Cost: FREE

35. HP Cloud Service Automation
@hpnews

HP cloud management software ensures secure, compliant cloud services. IT professionals and cloud engineers use HP Cloud Service Automation to automate and simplify deployment and management of hybrid IT services.

Key Features:

Deploy and manage your choice of hybrid IT services

Design and orchestrate full stack services

Portable service applications

Continuous delivery automation, server automation, operations orchestration, and database middleware automation are all available, plus others

Cost: Contact for a quote

36. ServiceNow
@servicenow

ServiceNow offers service management for every enterprise department, including IT. With ServiceNow cloud provisioning, IT professionals can automate the entire cloud management lifecycle.

Key Features:

Speeds the deployment of cloud environments to just minutes

Self-service cloud selection, automated, standardized cloud creation, and resource optimization

IT determines all of the parameters

Automate the fulfillment of virtual infrastructure requests while minimizing the time IT spends managing the infrastructure

Cost: Contact for a quote

37. Appcore Cloud Management
@appcore

A leading CloudStack solutions company that focuses on simplifies cloud management, Appcore Cloud Management is a comprehensive solution. Manage resources, automate provisioning, and configure across your cloud infrastructure with Appcore Cloud Management.

Key Features:

Automatically provision servers, holistically monitor and manage your cloud, and meter services for comprehensive billing

Simple user interfaces provide a holistic view of the cloud environment

Delivers the functionality and ease of use within its platform to ensure true on-demand capability

Appcore’s monitoring solution integrates with Zenoss into the CloudStack user interface to provide event and telemetry data for both physical and virtual devices

Cost: Contact for a quote

38. Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager
@citrix

A unified cloud services delivery and business management platform, Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager enables cloud services automation for provisioning, user management, and more. Easily deliver a range of cloud services while integrating with your existing business, operations, and IT systems with Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager.

Key Features:

Unify and automate cloud services provisioning, business/operations support systems, billing and metering, and user management under a single platform

Extensible and customizable

Generate customized reports for current and historical activity with drill-down analytics

Cost: FREE trial available; Contact for a quote

39. ManageEngine Applications Manager
@APM_ME

IT professionals and SysAdmins get end-to-end application performance monitoring with ManageEngine Applications Manager. Determine whether your mission critical applications are really performing and gain superior visibility with ManageEngine Applications Manager.

Key Features:

Troubleshoot and manage problems faster

Automatically and proactively monitors business applications and makes sure they meet end user expectations

Automate resolution of problems by executing corrective programs/scripts, sending SNMP traps, and triggering actions such as automatic start/stop/restart of Windows services, VMs, and more

Cost:

Applications Manager Professional Edition starts at $795

Applications Manger Enterprise Edition starts at $7,995

40. DivvyCloud
@DivvyCloud

Integrate and optimize your multi-cloud management with DivvyCloud’s unified on-premise software. DivvyCloud delivers multi-cloud portfolio management that is fast, simple, and integrated.

Key Features:

Gain visibility as you collect server data across multiple public/private clouds or clusters via the unified DivvyCloud console

Manage compute resources including instances, storage, security groups, and networks across different clouds

Organize and group IT resources in meaningful ways to facilitate efficient cost management, team collaboration, and access control

Automate and enable engineer self-service with pre-defined provisioning templates and time-based events

Cost: Contact for a quote

41. NexentaStor
@Nexenta

The global leader of software-defined storage solutions, Nexenta offers its flagship SDS platform, NexentaStor. IT professionals and cloud engineers transform storage infrastructure, increase flexibility and agility, simplify management, and drastically reduce costs with NexentaStore.

Key Features:

Unified file and block storage services

Scales from tens of terabytes to petabyte configurations

Runs on industry standard hardware

Large namespace and high performance file repositories for streaming applications

Community and enterprise editions available

Cost: FREE trial available; Contact for a quote

42. pconsole

An administrative tool for working with clusters of machines, console allows IT professionals and SysAdmins to connect each node of your cluster simultaneously. Automate your cloud infrastructure by typing your administrative commands in a specialized window that multiplies the input to each of the connections you have opened.

Key Features:

Parallel access to each machine in your cluster

Unlimited number of simultaneous connections

Secure access

Easy installation, with no need to install it on each node in the cluster

Simple user interface

Cost: FREE

43. Openfiler

Openfiler delivers unified storage with block replication and web-based management. SysAdmins and IT professionals especially love Openfiler’s cost-free storage capacity expansion.

Key Features:

Works on any industry standard server

Powerful networked storage solution that exports data via a full suite of industry standard storage networking protocols

File-based storage networking protocols ensure cross-platform compatibility in homogenous networks

Cost:

Openfiler CE – SME Support Subscription – Single Node: €780.00

Openfiler CE – SME Support Subscription – 2 Node Cluster: €2,400.00

Openfiler CE – Enterprise Support Subscription – Single Node: €2,400.00

Openfiler CE – Enterprise Support Subscription – 2 Node Cluster: €4,200.00

Openfiler CE – Enterprise Support Subscription – 3 Node Cluster: €5,780.00

Openfiler CE – Enterprise Support Subscription – 3 Node Cluster: €6,560.00

44. ISconf

ISconf is “a cross between sudo(8) and a distributed version control tool like Git or Bitkeeper.” A cloud infrastructure automation tool, ISconf journals changes you make via ISconf and adds them to a distributed repository, queuing them for execution on other target machines.

Key Features:

As you turn on, build, reboot, and/or run ‘isconf up’ on other machines, ISconf consults the journal and executes the same changes, in the same order, on each machine

Target machines do not need to be running, or even built, at the time you check in changes

No central servers or other single points of failure

Cost: FREE

45. NixOS
@nixos_org

A Linux distribution “with a unique approach to package and configuration management,” NixOS is built on top of the Nix package manager. NixOS is completely declarative and makes upgrading systems reliable, making it a good cloud infrastructure automation tool.

Key Features:

Completely declarative approach; you write a specification in NixOS’s modular language and NixOS makes it happen

Atomic upgrades and rollbacks

DevOps friendly, so you can provision and manage networks of NixOS machines in common environments

Cost: FREE

46. PIKT

Cross-categorical, multi-purpose software for monitoring and configuring computer systems, administering networks, and more, PIKT is versatile and extensible. PIKT’s primary purpose is system monitoring and its secondary purpose is configuration management, and its scripting language and centrally directed process scheduler makes it a useful, time-saving cloud infrastructure automation tool.

Key Features:

Sophisticated, feature-rich file preprocessor

Innovative scripting language with unique labor-saving features

Flexible, centrally directed process scheduler

Customizing file installer

Collection of powerful command-line extensions

Cost: FREE

47. Quattor

Quattor is a cloud infrastructure automation tool that delivers “DevOps for GrownUps.” This powerful, portable, and modular set of tools provides for the automated installation, configuration, and management of clusters, clouds, grids, and more.

Key Features:

Manage the complete lifecycle of systems, from initial installation, through configuration, to service upgrades

Well-defined interfaces allow alternative implementations and integration with existing site-specific tools

Scalable, from academic to enterprise environments, managing infrastructures ranging from tens of systems to over 30,000

Extensive validation features for system descriptions catch configuration errors before you deploy them to your infrastructure

Cost: FREE

48. ProfitBricks

@ProfitBricks

It would be remiss not to mention the ProfitBricks Data Center Designer. The latest release of the easy-to-use, award-winning Data Design Center R2 (DCD) allows you to design your own data center in just a few clicks, which makes the creation, configuration and management of your virtual data center effortless and all without having to build a costly physical infrastructure.

Key Features:

Create and edit data centers with cloud servers, cloud storage and cloud networks

Multi-user access management functionality

Ability to set firewall rules

Enable/disable 2-factor authentication,

Manage multiple data centers, and their costs

Create, edit and delete snapshots and images, and reserve IPs

Cost: FREE, with a ProfitBricks cloud account

We enjoyed putting this list of cloud tools together – please remember it’s in no particular order! And don’t forget to visit DevOps Central, our cloud computing community website for DevOps and Cloud Developer professionals and ProfitBricks IaaS users. We’ve also got a DevOps Central promotion. DevOps Central community members get 33% discount off regular US pricing.

The post 48 Best Cloud Tools for Infrastructure Automation appeared first on ProfitBricks Blog.

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