24 Jun, 2020
Puppet launches public beta of Relay tool to automate DevOps tasks
Cloud

Relay promises to automate key processes from a range of cloud-based apps and services, including GitHub, Datadog, Jira, Terraform, and Slack.

Devops for software continuous operations and development or programming concept, multi color arrows pointing to the word Devops at the center of black cement chalkboard wall

Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto

DevOps engineers often struggle to manage and complete all the tasks that come their way, especially as organizations transition more to cloud-based applications. Faced with an overflow of disparate tools and technologies, engineers have to either manually try to accomplish each task or build their own tools to juggle all the work. Another option worth trying is Relay, a tool from Puppet that aims to automate the workflow thrown at developers, DevOps engineers, and site reliability engineers (SREs).

SEE: Implementing DevOps: A guide for IT pros (free PDF) (TechRepublic) 

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Now available as a public beta, Relay is able to connect to dozens of cloud-based platforms, tools, and APIs already used by DevOps engineers and developers, according to Puppet. Some of the supported services include PagerDuty, GitHub, Datadog, Jira, Terraform, and Slack. By listening to certain triggers from these tools and platforms, Relay can automatically handle a variety of different tasks.

“Without a way to manage and automate the flood of events and hundreds of APIs developers use, time, money, and mental capital are being thrown away,” Puppet CTO Deepak Giridharagopal said in a press release. “Many engineers try to create their own one-off automation tools or integration hubs, but this is inefficient and risky. Relay replaces this home-grown digital duct tape with reusable, proven, automated workflows. It’s like IFTTT (If This, Then That), but for DevOps.”

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As some examples, a Relay workflow could listen for alerts from PagerDuty, query metrics from DataDog, reconfigure infrastructure with Terraform, and send a notification via Slack. Relay can manage tasks across a range of specialities, according to Puppet, including the following:

  • Security. Enforce security controls across your infrastructure, such as ensuring that cloud storage buckets are secured, volumes are encrypted, or that unused SSH keys are removed from an account.
  • Cost optimization. Proactively delete underutilized cloud resources across AWS, Azure, and GCP such as unattached volumes, unused load balancers, and untagged instances.
  • Incident response. When a new incident occurs, Relay extends PagerDuty or VictorOps by automatically remediating known issues or running diagnostic actions with Bolt.
  • Continuous delivery. You can connect Relay to Docker Hub or GitHub to automatically provision cloud infrastructure with Terraform or Pulumi and deploy the latest versions of your microservices to Kubernetes, Google Cloud Run, AWS Lambda, and other platforms.
  • Operations. Delete old snapshots, alert on quota usage, and report on resource utilization.

You can populate Relay with your own workflows or use any of the built-in examples. For more information on the Relay beta, check out Puppet’s blog post. To try Relay, sign up at the beta site, and you can start using the tool immediately.

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