Emerging Patterns in Cloud Computing: Cloud Assembly and its Implications published 9/5/2023 | 3 min read

What is Cloud Assembly?

Cloud Assembly is a cloud management tool developed by VMware for infrastructure automation. It enables developers and IT operators to create and manage cloud-based infrastructure with standardization, governance, and policy-driven provisioning across multi-cloud environments.

Here is an example of how you could define your networking configuration utilizing Cloud Assembly's Infrastructure as Code (IaC):

  
formatVersion: 1
resources:
  Cloud_Network:
    type: Cloud.Network
    properties:
      networkType: existing
      name: 'my-network'
  Cloud_LoadBalancer:
    type: Cloud.LoadBalancer
    properties:
      network: '${resource.Cloud_Network.id}'
      provider: AWS

With a few lines, this little example shows how you can ease network creation and load balancer assignment using Cloud Assembly.

Why is Cloud Assembly Significant?

One of the prominent trends in IT is the shift towards multi-cloud environments. Streamlining the development and deployment across these multi-cloud environments is a considerable challenge. That's where Cloud Assembly steps in.

• Standardization and Consistency: Cloud Assembly ensures that cloud resources are defined and created consistently, maintaining standardization across environments.

• Flexibility: It simplifies the deployment process across different cloud environments without manually coding for each one. This flexibility is highly beneficial for organizations striving for agility.

• Scalability: It permits managing a huge number of deployments seamlessly, making it an excellent choice for companies intending to scale their operations.

• Enhanced Integration: It integrates nicely with other VMware products, providing a unified approach to cloud management.

The Challenges in Adopting Cloud Assembly

Despite its benefits, transitioning to Cloud Assembly does come with challenges integral to adapting to any new technology.

• Complexity: Planning, designing, and implementing an appropriate Cloud Assembly model can be complex. Hence, it is necessary to revisit and optimize cloud computing strategies to ensure a seamless transition.

• Integration with existing tools: The integration of Cloud Assembly with existing CI/CD or other DevOps tools might require customization, hence needing investment in terms of time and resources.

• Learning Curve: It introduces a new learning curve for the IT teams who need to adapt to this new method of handling multi-cloud infrastructure.

Conclusion

Cloud Assembly is a promising solution for organizations moving towards multi-cloud environments. It simplifies the management and deployment of workloads across various platforms, providing agility, scalability, and consistency. However, its implementation comes with certain challenges that underline the need for a well-defined and properly planned cloud strategy. Overall, with right planning and execution, its benefits can radically transform multi-cloud infrastructure deployment and management.

In the rapidly evolving cloud computing landscape, staying updated with tools like Cloud Assembly is crucial for anyone working in DevOps or Infrastructure Management.

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