Asgard: web-based cloud management and deployment – netflix techblog – medium

CloudWatch metrics could be selected in the default supplied by Amazon . com for example CPUUtilization, or could be custom metrics printed from your application utilizing a library like Servo for Java.

Why don’t you the AWS Management Console?

The AWS Management Console has its own ways to use someone together with your Amazon . com password who must configure something Asgard doesn’t provide. However, for everyday large-scale operations, the AWS Management Console hasn’t yet met the requirements of the Netflix cloud usage model, therefore we built Asgard rather. Here are the reasons.

Hide the Amazon . com keys
Netflix grants its employees lots of freedom and responsibility, such as the legal rights and responsibilities of enhancing and repairing production systems. The majority of individuals systems run within the Amazon . com cloud. Although you want to enable countless engineers to handle their very own cloud apps, we prefer to not give these the key secrets of connect to the company’s Amazon . com accounts directly. Supplying an interior console enables us to allow Asgard users use of our Amazon . com accounts without telling a lot of employees the shared cloud passwords. This tactic also saves us from requiring to assign and revoke countless Identity and Access Management (IAM) cloud makes up about employees.
Auto Scaling Groups
At this moment the AWS Management Console lacks support for Auto Scaling Groups (ASGs). Netflix depends on ASGs because the fundamental unit of deployment and management for cases of our applications. Our goals in open sourcing Asgard would be to help other Amazon . com customers make greater utilization of Amazon’s sophisticated auto scaling features. ASGs are a huge part from the Netflix formula to supply reliability, redundancy, financial savings, clustering, discoverability, easy deployment, and the opportunity to roll back a poor deployment rapidly.
Enforce Conventions
Like every growing assortment of things users are permitted to produce, the cloud can certainly be a confusing place filled with costly, unlabeled clutter. Area of the Netflix Cloud Architecture is using registered services connected with cloud objects by naming convention. Asgard enforces these naming conventions to keep the cloud a saner place that’s easy to audit and cleanup regularly as things get stale, untidy, or forgotten.
Logging
To date the AWS console doesn’t expose a log of latest user actions with an account. This will make it hard to determine whom to whenever a problem starts, and just what recent changes might connect with the issue. Insufficient logging is another non-starter for just about any sensitive subsystems that legally require auditability.
Integrate Systems
Getting our very own console empowers us to determine when you want to add integration points with this other engineering systems for example Jenkins and our internal Discovery service.
Automate Workflow
Multiple steps get into a secure, intelligent deployment process. By knowing certain use cases ahead of time Asgard are capable of doing all the steps needed for any deployment according to one form submission.
Simplify REST API
For common operations that others have to perform, we are able to expose and publish our very own REST API to complete precisely what we would like in a manner that hides a few of the complex steps in the user.

Costs

When utilizing cloud services, it’s vital that you have a lid in your costs. By June 5, 2012, Amazon . com now provides a method to track your account’s charges frequently. This information is not uncovered through Asgard at this moment, but someone inside your company should keep an eye on your cloud costs regularly. See http://aws.typepad.com/aws/2012/06/new-programmatic-access-to-aws-billing-data.html

Beginning up Asgard doesn’t initially lead you to incur any Amazon . com charges, because Amazon . com includes a free tier for SimpleDB usage with no charges for creating Security Groups, Launch Configurations, or empty Auto Scaling Groups. However, once you expand an ASG above zero Amazon . com will start charging you for example usage, based on your status for Amazon’s Free Usage Tier. Creating ELBs, RDS instances, along with other cloud objects may also lead you to incur charges. Understand the expense before creating too other areas of the cloud, and don’t forget to delete your experiments once you no more need them. Your Amazon . com pricing is your personal responsibility, so run your cloud operations wisely.

Cost references: http://aws.amazon . com.com/ec2/prices/

Movies

By remarkable coincidence, Thor and Thor: Tales of Asgard are actually open to watch on Netflix streaming.

Conclusion

Asgard continues to be one of the greatest tools for application deployment and cloud management at Netflix for a long time. By releasing Asgard towards the free community hopefully more and more people will discover the Amazon . com cloud and Auto Scaling simpler to utilize, even in particular scale like Netflix. More Asgard features is going to be released regularly, so we welcome participation by users on GitHub.

Stick to the Netflix Tech Blog and also the @NetflixOSS twitter feed for additional free aspects of the Netflix Cloud Platform.

If you are interested when controling us to resolve greater number of these interesting problems, take a look at the Netflix jobs page to find out if something might suit you. We’re hiring!