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Question

Have to learn Infrastructure as code - some questions

  • 9 July 2023
  • 5 replies
  • 161 views
F
Badge +2

Hey Guys!

I have no experience in automation. I want to apply for a job that requires IaC. That's all that I know. I don't know what kind of IaC they are talking about. It's a large enterprise environment. 

 

What are your CommVault IaC solutions?

 

There are different solutions, like Ansible. What is supported by CommVault, or what solution works best for you? I know you can save as script, write qcommand scripts, using the Powershell cmdlet, but what is more common nowadays? 

 

What are the benefits of your IaC solutions, why did you implement it, what are the best use cases, and why was it your best decision, otherwise, what do you dislike, and what are some downsides?

 

What kind of automation does not work with CommVault but would be great, what are some features which are you waiting for?

 

Thank you a lot!

 

Kr

5 replies

S
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +6

There are multiple Modules and Plugins for Commvault, like the mentioned Powershell CommandLet. In regards to IaC the two most fitting options would be Ansible https://github.com/Commvault/ansible and TerraForm https://registry.terraform.io/providers/Commvault/commvault/latest/docs.

Personally can’t recommend either yet. Ansible doesn’t seem to bet much love and barely can do more than start backup or restore from what I know. Terraform is actively developed, got some nice cleanups and enhancements lately, nevertheless it is still very early and can only support a handful of workloads and entities.

Maybe check out the Python Plugin, it is basis for some of the other Plugins and can do more https://github.com/Commvault/cvpysdk.

Personally am working my way through REST API to build a repo of requests to bootstrap and base-config our next Prod Environment. No IaC at all, but better than a million clicks in Java or Webbrowser :-)

Onno van den Berg
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Userlevel 7
Badge +19

@Fusi generally speaking I would recommend to look into Terraform because it is really designed as a tool to deploy infrastructures as code and because it is agnostic. For infrastructures running on AWS you see a lot of customers using AWS CloudFormation and for Azure you could look into Bicep. For configuration tasks and for software deployments you could look into Ansible. 

Commvault has a terraform provider to deploy Commvault specific configurations and they also offer Ansible playbooks and for Chef there is a cookbook in the supermarket. There are also PowerShell and Python SDKs to automate tasks, but those you would normally use after deploying your infrastructure resources. 

F
Badge +2

Thank you guys, I will look into it :). 

 

If you have more information about the topic, especial solutions which you have already implemented in your environment, or If you have some nice how tos, use cases, or documentations, let me know :)

 

Kr

O
Rank
Userlevel 6
Badge +15

Here is the link to the Commvault On-demand library as well:

 

https://commvaultondemand.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ODLL/overview

S
Rank
Userlevel 2
Badge +6

could you share links to those ansible playbooks? I only know the couple on Git. Customer would like to automate Backup & Restore Testing for FileSystem and VSA, having something ot go by would be helpful.

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