Extracurriary programs focused on bringing the world closer to the youngest of technology: programming, artificial intelligence, electronics, video games, cybersecurity, etc...
Automation as a basis for accelerating the development lifecycle
Within cloud working, automation is one of the most important key elements, as it facilitates consistent and reliable results.
The standardisation achieved through this automation allows for the optimisation of resources, which can be very limited, and the adoption of best practices that improve operational efficiency.
Technologies Azure DevOps | Terraform | Entity Framework Core | SQL | Enter ID
What is the motivation?
Los entornos cloud ofrecen un gran potencial, pero muchas veces no se aprovecha por completo. La automation ayuda a reducir errores humanos y garantiza resultados más fiables. Bien utilizados, estos entornos fortalecen la resiliencia empresarial al proteger datos críticos y asegurar su integridad y disponibilidad.
Program aims
Diseñar una arquitectura Disaster Recovery activa-pasiva entre Azure y GPC que sea escalable y resistente a fallos.
Lograr un Tiempo de Recuperación o RTO de 30 minutos para la infraestructura y los recursos críticos del negocio.
Conseguir que el Punto de Recuperación o RPO sea de 30 minutos para la base de datos del negocio.
Diseñar una estrategia de despliegue y gestión automatizada.
Development
The development of this solution for disasters affecting critical infrastructure has moved away from the usual practice of using native resources offered by cloud providers and has focused on non-native migration tools. The implementation of the solution has been based on:
Security measuresare one of the key factors for a resilient structure. The first major group of measures is related to data security, such as automating database backups with DevOps. In case a security breach does occur, the second group of measures, dedicated to the implementation of an action protocol, is focused on achieving a fast and efficient recovery of the service in case of interruption.
Pipeline in Azure DevOpsThis approach allowed the deployment of the infrastructure, but also the configuration and automation of the backups, allowing them to be transferred from Azure (active environment) to FCP.
Deployment of the architectureThis type of deployment requires more basic tools, such as Visual Studio Code, but also more specialised tools, such as Terraform, which allow working with Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Tools from Google Cloud and Azure, such as Kubernetes, were also used to help in the design, deployment and management process.
Scenario planningIn order to anticipate unforeseen events, a multitude of scenarios were considered. They were divided into natural, technical and human, each with a range of possible events leading to service interruption and data loss, such as cloud provider failure or accidental data corruption.
Creating a recovery planOnce an event occurs, a rapid response is necessary to minimise possible damage. To this end, processes such as healthchecks and SQL database backups were automated. The plan itself also needs to be reviewed, so periodic testing was carried out, and different performance metrics and success criteria were established.
Results
El proyecto consiguió automatizar la transferencia periódica de backups de Azure a GCP, superando varios desafíos y reduciendo costes al centralizar el almacenamiento en un único bucket.
Los beneficios que aporta el proyecto a una organización son:
Automation of the entire process through pipelines.
Low economic cost for project implementation, because at any given time only the cost of the infrastructure that is in operation is borne, as only one backup storage bucket is deployed in the passive cloud.
Future scalability, requiring further security development phases.
Conclusions
Este proyecto demostró una alternativa distinta a las soluciones habituales de los proveedores cloud para implementar un sistema de recuperación ante desastres que garantice la continuidad del negocio y la protección de datos críticos.
Gracias al uso de Terraform, Azure DevOps y Kubernetes, se automatizó la Infraestructura como Código, facilitando la implementación y gestión, mientras que la seguridad de las bases de datos se reforzó mediante la automatización de backups con pipelines, asegurando su protección y recuperación en caso de desastre.
English (UK)