error saving file!error saving file!error saving file!error saving file!

Your address will show here +12 34 56 78
2020 Blog, Blog, Featured, RLAws Blogs, ServiceOne

As enterprises adopt popular Agile and DevOps tools and solutions from Atlassian, it is essential to create an end to end automation pipeline covering ITSM workflows. Integration of Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) tools, with cloud infrastructure platforms like AWS, can provide faster software deliveries with CI/CD, infrastructure automation and continuous production monitoring. RLCatalyst Intelligent Automation solutions complement the platform with an enterprise BOTs Automation solution and a mature end-to-end monitoring Command Centre solution. This blog details out an integrated solution between AWS Service Management Connector for Jira Service Desk enterprise workflows of User Onboarding + Asset Provisioning lifecycle.

The AWS Service Management Connector for Jira Service Desk (Jira SD) allows Jira Service Desk end-users to provision, manage, and operate AWS resources natively via Atlassian’s Jira Service Desk. Jira Service Desk Cloud module supports AWS Service Catalog Connector, and the Jira Service Desk Data Centre & Server module supports AWS Service Management Connector.

Jira SD admins can create and provide secured, governed AWS resources to end-users via service catalog, execute automation playbooks via AWS system manager and finally track the resources in a Config Item view powered by AWS config.

On downloading the connector from the Atlassian marketplace for no additional cost, you need to connect it with your AWS account, preferably governed by AWS Control Tower for enhanced security.

The AWS Service Catalog allows you to provision or terminate and centrally manage commonly deployed AWS resources like workspaces. AWS resources like workspaces can be pre-approved, provisioned or terminated based on approval.

Similarly, the AWS Service Management Connector allows Jira SD users to fulfil all the related operational activities. Some of them are listed below.


  • Migrate or Manage CloudWatch Agent.
  • Manage Amazon Inspector Agent.
  • Apply Ansible Playbooks or Chef Recipes on AWS managed instances.
  • Apply Patches from baseline.
  • Change the standby state of an EC2 instance in an auto-scaling group.
  • Attach an additional EBS Volume to the EC2 instance.
  • Attach IAM to an Instance.
  • Install or Uninstall a Distributor package.
  • Configure CloudTrail Logging.
  • Export Metrics and log files from your instances to Amazon CloudWatch.
  • Configure an instance to work with containers and Dockers.
  • Enable or disable live patching on Linux EC2 instances.
  • Configure S3 bucket logging.
  • Enable or disable Windows Updates.
  • Copy Snapshot created.
  • Create DynamoDB backup.
  • Create a new AMI from an EC2 instance.
  • Create an RDS snapshot for an RDS instance.
  • Create an incident in ServiceNow.


As shown in the above diagram, Relevance Lab helps enterprises already on AWS & Jira Service Desk, to integrate the two using AWS Service Management Connector. The integration enables a seamless process to create custom workflows like the creation of auto-approval, cost-based approval and role-based approval. Likewise, raise an incident in case of any failure of the resources provisioned or terminated and create change requests for every update of the workloads.

Benefits of AWS Service Management Connector for Jira Service Desk:

  • Free and Out of Box (OOB) feature without any add-on cost.
  • Support multiple AWS accounts and ensure governance through AWS CT.
  • Provision and Maintenance of AWS resources through one platform (Jira SD).
  • Easy to use by the IT admins without in-depth knowledge of AWS platform.
  • Multiple Portfolios and Service Catalogs for different departments within an Organization.
  • Represent Config Items in a tree structure.
  • Run most of the automated documents in AWS system manager through Jira SD.

The end to end orchestration of User Onboarding and Asset provisioning leverages the out of box features for AWS and Atlassian tools. However, for many real-world scenarios, the complex workflows need integration with other third-party tools like AD, OKTA, HR systems (Workday/Taleo) and compliance solutions. In situations that require more complex workflows and third-party integrations RLCatalyst BOTs solution is integrated with AWS and Atlassian solutions to provide lifecycle automation and observability post provisioning.


Conclusion:
Relevance Lab is a partner of AWS and a DevOps specialist company implementing Atlassian solutions. We help organizations adopt AWS Service Management Connector with ITSM tools like Jira Service Desk and ServiceNow. Integration of AWS Service Management Connector provides a common interface and ease for all L1 and L2 activities for the ITSM users to manage AWS resources. Our RLCatalyst based Intelligent Automation and Command Centre complement these solutions to bring in greater efficiencies.


Click here for a demo video.

For more details, please feel free to reach out to marketing@relevancelab.com

0

2020 Blog, AIOps Blog, Blog, Featured

With growing Cloud adoption and need for Intelligent Infrastructure Automation, larger enterprises are adopting Hybrid-Cloud solutions like Terraform. Creating reusable templates for provisioning of complex infrastructure setups in Cloud and Data Centers, Orchestrating Cloud management with self-service Portals and full lifecycle monitoring of the assets can provide a flexible, reusable and scalable enterprise cloud solutions.
Relevance Lab is a Hashicorp partner with multiple successful enterprise infrastructure automation implementations using Terraform covering AWS, Azure, VMWare and GCP with 5000+ nodes setups.


Solution Highlights:

  • Our solution allows you to rebuild stacks using automation completely. It is instrumental in provisioning newer environments with minimal code changes.
  • It has the built in ability to replicate stacks across multiple regions with minimal code changes.
  • Capability to add / remove new instances to components with few code changes.
  • Simple code structure. Any new infrastructure needs can be easily provisioned by modifying the variables.
  • Ability to modify instances such as Volumes, Instance Sizing, AMI changes, Security groups with minimal code changes.

Tools & Technologies:
Terraform from HashiCorp has emerged as the best Infrastructure automation tool. Terraform helps in building, changing and versioning of the infrastructure efficiently. Terraform is a declarative and, with the help of configuration files, we can describe the components to be built and managed across the entire datacenter.


Design Considerations:
Below mentioned are some of our design considerations based on standard practices in infrastructure automation. These structures have helped us gain flexibility and ease in scaling stacks based on demand.

  1. Code Repo Structure:
  2. Each AWS stack is a separated GITHUB Repo while Terraform modules are a shared repo.

    • It makes the code design structure very scalable to create newer AWS stacks in a different region or re-build stacks in case of a disaster or scale more resources based on traffic/load.
    • A separate repo helps in maintaining isolation as each stack would have varied footprints of the resources.
    • It helps in security and compliance as audits can be performed against a specific stack.

  3. Segmentation:
  4. The below design model is showing the Automation build-out for each AWS account. Each layer is well segmented and can be easily scaled based on the needs. Making any specific change to each of the layers is easier.


  5. Integration:
  6. Fully integrated with GITHUB for Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment.

    • Each change is performed on a branch which is merged via a Pull Request.
    • Each Pull request is reviewed and verified and combined with the Master branch.
    • Infrastructure changes are thoroughly tested during the PLAN stage and then terraform APPLY.

  7. Code reusability:
  8. Modules provide an easy way to abstract, common blocks of configuration into reusable infrastructure elements.

    • Modules can help with this as they significantly reduce duplication, enable isolation, and enhance testability.

Benefits:

  • Provides the ability to spin up an entire environment in minutes.
  • It reduces time to rollout complex network and storage changes to less than a few minutes.
  • Infrastructure is managed as a code, and all changes are tested well; resulting in fewer outages because of infra configuration changes.
  • It is easy to operate and maintain because terraform uses a declarative language.
  • Infra is Idempotent, and a state-based desired system.

Conclusion:
Using design best practices of terraform, enterprises can quickly build and manage infrastructure, which is highly scalable and efficient. Further, this automation can be hooked to a Jenkins pipeline project for automated code pushes for infra changes which can be tied to a standard release and deployment process.


  • Leveraging Chef for configuration management and managing all the application software installation and configurations via Chef cookbooks and recipes.
  • Leveraging InSpec for auditing the properties of the AWS resources.

There are few other additions which could be introduced to this design to do a tight bonding between security and compliance policies and infrastructure as code. That may be achieved by integrating with Sentinel It helps in prevention of infra provisioning if there are deviations in the Infra code which do not adhere to the security policies. Sentinel helps us in building a fine-grained, condition-based policy framework.


For more details, please feel free to reach out to marketing@relevancelab.com


0

2020 Blog, Blog, Featured

RLCatalyst OKTA Integration

Modern Identity and Access Management are foundational to building digital customer experiences. In the area of Intelligent Automation, it is a critical need to have a proper authentication & authorization system and audit trail for BOT led executions. As BOTs handle more workload and user interactions, there is a crucial need to have RLCatalyst BOTs integrated with enterprise IDAM platforms like OKTA using SAML 2.0. OKTA provides a modern platform for IDAM and further by using SAML 2.0 adapter RLCatalyst now supports more secure and flexible security for both UI and API based access to its automation functionality. Our solution provides frictionless integration between ServiceNow, OKTA, Windows AD, RLCatalyst BOTs Server hosted across Hybrid Cloud platforms.



SAML 2.0 is a widely accepted industry standard for user authentication. It separates authentication and authorization from the application and the system of record for users which in most organizations is Active Directory or any LDAP based system. SAML 2.0 standard defines two entities. The first entity is the Identity Provider (IdP) to which applications can request authentication for a user. The other entity is the application itself (Service Provider or SP). Using applications integrated to IdP using SAML 2.0, users in an organization only need to have one set of credentials to log in to any application. Therefore, administrators can centrally administer access to all applications.


RLCatalyst BOTs Server is an Intelligent Automation software that is in use with enterprises and supports single sign-on using the SAML 2.0 protocol. When a user tries to access the application, they will be redirected to the Identity Provider’s login screen. The IdP accepts the credentials and authenticates the user and then redirects the user back to the RLCatalyst (here the Service Provider or SP) with an Auth Token. The SP then provides access to the resource requested. In subsequent requests, the same auth token is passed by the user agent, and the SP validates the token against the IdP and then provides access to the resource.



Supporting the SAML 2.0 standard allows RLCatalyst to seamlessly work with multiple Identity Providers like Okta, Auth0, Ping Identity etc. It enables enterprises to integrate our automation platform seamlessly into their SSO roll-out plans, thus reinforcing their security and compliance.


For more details, please feel free to reach out to marketing@relevancelab.com


0