The cloud and DevOps are the new kids on the block. They might not be what you expect, but together they make a good team. Cloud is known for providing scalable resources and DevOps is known for automation of deployment processes. Together these two technologies will help to implement new software faster than ever before!
The relationship between cloud and DevOps is like that of peanut butter and jelly- it just makes sense! 😂 Imagine your company having all of its resources in one place, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). Now imagine how much time you would save if there was no need to purchase physical servers or spend hours configuring them individually. This dream becomes reality thanks to our favorite tech couple: Cloud and DevOps 😍

Development teams look for new tools, methods, and approaches for developing and delivering the most advanced technologies every day. For many of today’s most creative innovators, the cloud offers a scalable and adaptable route to success. It provides novel security, automation, and development options. Integrating DevOps into the cloud enables businesses to compete more effectively in a complex and ever-changing industry. Rather than reinventing DevOps, effective cloud integration requires implementing and adopting best engineering practices.

In this article, we’ll look at what DevOps is and how it works, as well as the connection between cloud and DevOps, cloud-based DevOps solutions, and the benefits of cloud-based DevOps solutions.

What is DevOps?

DevOps is a technique that companies use to manage the development and release of software. DevOps is a methodology for rapidly providing services and applications. The development approach combines software development and operations into a unified process emphasizing automation and efficiency.

The goal of DevOps is to have frequent incremental improvements rather than periodic significant releases. This method enables businesses to produce higher-quality software products more smoothly and effectively.

The primary benefits of DevOps in today’s environment are as follows:

• Effective application release automation 
• Infrastructure automation choices
• CI/CD
• Rapid Delivery with Agile frameworks
• Rapid issue resolution

How DevOps works?

Development and operations teams do not divide themselves in the DevOps environment, as they would be in traditional development setups. In specific scenarios, these two teams combine to form a single unit where engineers may work throughout the entire development lifecycle, from development to deployment and operations.

Here, you may acquire a variety of talents unrelated to any particular role. Security mechanisms and quality assurance may become increasingly engaged in the application development lifecycle in some instances. When everyone on a DevOps team focuses on security, the team becomes a DevSecOps solution.

In a DevOps environment, teams use a variety of techniques to automate formerly laborious and slow operations. They use the most advanced technology available to accelerate the development of apps. For example, in DevOps, automating tasks like code deployment and infrastructure provisioning that previously needed assistance from other teams to improve the team’s pace.

What is the relationship between DevOps and Cloud?

Both cloud computing and DevOps have plenty of other advantages in the area of the agile enterprise. Cloud technology enables businesses to access an infinite number of features and solutions at their own pace. There is no limit to the amount of capability that a company may access through the cloud. Cloud technology enables rapid feature upgrades and enhancements in any setting.

Similarly, DevOps fosters an agile workplace for all parties involved. Both systems provide distinct advantages in terms of speed and production. However, when cloud and DevOps combine, their capabilities complement one another, resulting in an even more attractive solution.

The cloud enables centralized deployments and may include built-in DevOps assistance. For instance, if DevOps teams are required to build the components of a solution in a particular manner, the cloud’s sophisticated automation capabilities may help simplify and repeat the process.

Cloud-Based DevOps Tools

Nowadays, you can operate your complete DevOps stack in the cloud through cloud-managed DevOps solutions. We have discussed two of the most popular ones: Azure DevOps and AWS DevOps.

Azure Cloud and DevOps

Microsoft’s integrated DevOps platform is Azure DevOps (previously known as Visual Studio Team System or VSTS). It allows you to manage the whole of your DevOps cycle via a single integrated interface. While Azure DevOps Services is a cloud-based DevOps solution that you may use as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) application, Azure DevOps Server is a self-hosted on-premises version of the same product.

Microsoft’s DevOps solution comprises several products, each of which addresses a unique step of your process. Azure Boards enable planning and project management. The Azure Pipeline is a continuous integration and delivery tool. Azure Repos provides cloud-hosted Git repositories, Azure Test Plans is a testing toolkit, and Azure Artifacts enable the creation, management, and deployment of packages.

However, you don’t need to utilize all of the tools included in Azure DevOps Services; you may alternatively subscribe to them separately. If you need more capabilities, the Visual Studio Marketplace has over 1,000 Azure DevOps extensions, including integrations, statistics, visualizations, and crash reporting.

AWS Cloud and DevOps

AWS DevOps is a service offered by Amazon Web Services that consists of a collection of integrated DevOps tools for managing the entire software development lifecycle. While AWS is mainly utilized in the cloud, you can also run all the tools on-premises using AWS Outposts, which enable you to deploy any AWS infrastructure component on your in-house server.

In contrast to Azure DevOps Services, a PaaS (Platform-as-a-Service) solution, AWS is an IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) solution, which means it is connected to the underlying infrastructure. While packages may be deployed from Azure DevOps Platform to another environment, such as AWS, the opposite is not feasible. You can only deploy to AWS infrastructure through AWS DevOps, such as EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) or S3 (Simple Storage Service).

AWS DevOps toolset includes:

• A continuous integration/continuous delivery service called AWS CodePipeline.
• A managed service build tool called AWS CodeBuild.
• A deployment automation tool called AWS CodeDeploy.
• A platform for managing DevOps projects called AWS CodeStar.

In general, AWS DevOps is probably the most refined DevOps platform for existing or prospective Amazon Web Services customers.

Which one to choose between Azure and AWS?

The primary distinction between the Azure and AWS DevOps toolsets is how they integrate with their respective platforms. Both products, for obvious reasons, combine the appearance and feel of their different cloud platform’s user interfaces. AWS DevOps is much simpler to get started with, while the Azure DevOps suite is more integrated across the various Azure DevOps toolsets and has a considerably more extensive set of integrations with the whole Azure Marketplace.

Moreover, upon choosing, it all comes down to what your employer thinks. That is, whatever job you get is of primary importance. If the sole job available targets Azure systems, then focus on completing an Azure DevOps certification. On the other hand, the industry has shifted toward AWS. Many companies and hiring managers prefer individuals with an AWS-based DevOps certification, owing to AWS’s increasing market dominance and various other fundamental options that perform better when AWS systems are used.

Apart from that, it all comes down to your work needs and which one you believe is most advantageous for you since this is the only way to choose between the two and seek a source of DevOps certifications.

Advantages of cloud computing DevOps

Cloud solutions and DevOps complement one another well in an environment designed for agility and adaptability. When DevOps and cloud computing are integrated, they can significantly improve the software development lifecycle. Businesses that use DevOps in the cloud may improve software delivery performance by an average of 81 percent.

The following are the primary advantages of cloud-based DevOps:

Automation options based on the cloud

Automation is a critical component of DevOps efficiency. Numerous cloud platforms provide sophisticated automation capabilities for DevOps operations, such as continuous development and integration. These technologies provide uniformity and efficiency while requiring less human involvement.

Centralized platform

The cloud offers a centralized framework from which businesses can manage all aspects of their production workloads, including testing, deployment, monitoring, and operation. This enables you to keep track of everything in one location. When all of your DevOps information is in one place, it’s simpler to manage compliance and security. This way, you may get even more actionable insights and business information.

Scalable infrastructure

The cloud is the most cost-effective method to guarantee that you can scale up or down any infrastructure required without spending a fortune on equipment. As a result of this scalability, DevOps is a highly effective way to roll out new features, functionality, and possibilities as your company develops. You can mix cloud computing with DevOps agility to provide limitless development possibilities for your organization.

Agile development

The cloud can offer a variety of staging and testing servers, allowing DevOps teams to continue working while waiting for servers to become available. Utilizing DevOps across the cloud environment enables teams to experiment more freely since builds may occur more often. DevOps teams can rapidly provision servers that meet their requirements.

Reliability and stability

Since cloud providers emphasize availability and stability, they can manage and maintain all aspects of the platform. Instead of worrying about these problems, IT firms can concentrate on product development, which results in better product performance, user experience, and speed to market. The key to success, in this case, is selecting a cloud provider capable of delivering the appropriate degree of uptime for your company.

Conclusion

Cloud computing, on its whole, has risen in popularity over the last several years. Businesses of all sizes can discover how a cloud environment enables them to develop at their speed. Just as cloud communications continue to increase in popularity, cloud-based development and application management procedures become more attractive as your team realizes the full advantages of cloud-based DevOps.

Later, you’ll find that you’re using various DevOps techniques to increase the efficiency of your whole workforce. When this occurs, your team’s performance and efficiency are sure to soar.  There are no limits to what your DevOps team and the cloud can achieve with the proper cloud provider guiding and supporting you.

As you begin to consider the advantages of the cloud and approach towards switching your business to the cloud, it is more important to understand the key differences and advantages of cloud services.

Infrastructure as a Service IaaS

Basically, infrastructure as service products are made of highly scalable and automated resources and the hardware is fully managed by the provider. This allows the user to use resources and build on-demand solutions.

IaaS delivers computing infrastructure such as servers, network, storage, and bundles up with a unified dashboard and users can access and provision resources using the APIs of those providers. IaaS clients are responsible for managing the resources and data. The service provider just gives the physical hardware setups. Use IaaS if you want to build your solution from scratch and manage throughout on a long-term sustainable scale.

AWS, DigitalOcean, Rackspace, Azure are some of the examples of IaaS providers.

Platform as a Service PaaS

Here the providers will give more components than IaaS. PaaS delivers standard frameworks for general use cases. Then the maintainer can customize it as per requirement.

PaaS provides a platform where users can come and deploy their use cases on managed resources. With these services, you don’t need to worry about the underlying setup. PaaS can streamline workflows when multiple team members work together on the same project. So use PaaS if your requirement starts from some standard layer and add more layers to it.

AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Heroku, Google App engine are some of the examples of PaaS providers.

Software as a Service SaaS

SaaS refers to cloud application services. This represents the most commonly used business option in the cloud world. SaaS utilizes the power of the internet and delivers fully managed services. Most SaaS products run directly on the browser and do not require any installation on the client-side.

SaaS eliminates the need for a separate service management team. As it abstracts all the layers, the service providers manage all potential technical glitches and servers, maintenance, and storage issues. Just plan and push user data into those services and leverage the power.

SaaS provides n number of advantages to employees and companies by reducing time and money spend on time taking tasks like provisioning and maintaining the resources. These services are hosted on centralized servers and accessible via the internet. Short-term projects that require easy and flexible resources use these services.

Google Drive, Dropbox, slack are some of the examples of cloud storage as a service.

Let’s understand these terms with a real-world example:

In an on-premises setup, the user has to manage everything. For IaaS, take the readymade incidents and bake on your own. PaaS stands for delivery of customized orders on demand. Furthermore, SaaS refers to restaurants where the person only goes and orders the pizza.

Sesame Disk: A SaaS cloud storage provider:

Sesame Disk is cloud storage as a service and team collaboration product where the clients can purchase storage services in a customized manner and increase team productivity. This service works all over the world including to send files and collaborate with Mainland China, APAC, Europe, USA, etc. In other words the specialty is file sharing nd collaboration.

The products and pricing model are constantly been improving to give better facilities for different workloads and client requirements. The primary focus of the product is to enhance file sharing capabilities including the cloud abstraction layer. The user-friendly dashboard says it all. Whatever your needs may be, we catch it cover.!

Pricing in a Nutshell for our Saas Cloud Storage:

Whether you’re a single person or you run a bigger enterprise, the common goal of collaboration with the team is fulfilled. The pricing model starts with a personal trial plan where you can test your requirements and find alignment to your use case for free. Then you can proceed with the upfront commitment plan where you get fixed storage and other services as per the plan. We have the business service plan available for larger workloads. Any of the fixed price and storage plans are so flexible that one can seamlessly top up the services. At last, the most demanded pricing model “pay-as-you-go” comes into play. Yes.! Only pay for the number of services you provision without any upfront commitment. Also find a general description of all of our products in this link

Some specifications like the number of users, cloud storage, transfer traffic, web and API access, internal shares are common across all plans. And services like backup, API development, history management come with the additional plans.

The key benefits of using cloud storage as a service product are enhanced team collaboration, global file sharing, faster and secured data transfer, and managing large workloads with a unified dashboard with a highly resilient pricing model.

On a closure note

The best suggestion is to consider your use case and choose the best service and pricing that can benefit you over and out. Do checkout team productivity, file sharing articles for more info. Contact our support team if you need assistance in understanding which service best fits your use case.

Now, Is this pay as you go product for you? Here in this article you will find the fundamentals to empower you to make a decision. The names of this family of products are; Freemium, Ondemand and StarterPlus, please see them in the prices page for reference.

Ondemand Cloud Storage Highlights

• First the product gives you freedom and flexibility to design your plan according to your needs. You will know “how” soon if you keep reading.
• Second you pay for what you really use.
• Then quantity of users, traffic and storage in your bill go independently from each other. This particular will be very flexible for many use cases with asymmetric consumption.
• Third there are specifics that apply to all of our products:
  • As our standard you will get resiliency and durability of data with point in time recovery backup. We have 3 copies of every file in 3 different data centers at all times.
  • Too Web office, API , Client software access.
  • Then admin panel for the organization and clear billing dashboard. As well as low latency and speed globally.
  • Nimble VIP customer support as we do for all products and customers.
  • Moreover lower standard prices for larger teams.
  • More, much more!

Those are just some highlights about the Ondemand. Now, this post you will get a full illustration about the Great, the good the bad and the horrible about this new product. Moving on!

Users

As you will appreciate on the picture attached, your users will be billed monthly on fixed amount. Just so you know it will be per month per user according to price tiers. Meaning this product has many price tiers we design to make it very affordable on entry level as well as for organizations with many users or a LOT of users. In fact the more users you have the cheaper the users get. Now entry level is cheap and you also get 20 GB included traffic and storage. Then for the rest you pay as you go (Ondemand). Then for your benefit we will talk about Storage and Traffic respectively.

Users are billed like all other “older” products in NiHao Cloud.

Storage

As a matter of fact the bill will be the amount you have consumed over time along the month. Meaning that periodically the system will measure your storage, and calculate your monthly average consumption. Lets to an example thought exercise about this.

Let say you get the product with 4 users. This would be 8 USD for those 4 users every month plus the storage and traffic they consume. Let us talk about traffic now. If those 4 users start exchanging using internal links. Just some office documents, they might work the whole month and not consume more than 20 GB in total. In which case the system will not bill anything.

Now, this is not most cases probably. If the users start using the system to store more data than 20 GB. Then the system will measure the storage every so often and record that measurement. E.g. today 15GB you store, tomorrow 55 and the next day 11GB. What the system does is to average those over 3 days and you pay that average. Notice it will not be the highest value.

How can your bill go crazy with storage?

Someone from your team would need to upload a LOT. When we say a lot we mean a LOT, remember this is by default unlimited. Now, you can set quotas per users to avoid this if desirable. That way gives you the flexibility of having unlimited. Then at the same time you can control on a user per user basis with quotas.
In case you set a limit for the account on purchase of afterwards in billing dashboard, your storage can NOT surpass said limit. Your bill for storage will never be higher than the limit you have set, but you would need to change it to store more “things”. Let us move on to traffic now.

Traffic

Currently we are billing traffic on the basis of your uploads and downloads of the user(s) under your organization in the system.

For example, if you are have worries about the traffic bills, be careful with viral content and big files shares sent publicly. E.g.: a 2 GB video that you or your team shares in Facebook and then 20 000 people watch it, that is 40TB of traffic.

Given the above example, if you set a limit, this may cause critical service interruptions that will be inconvenient for you or your business. This means that if any of the user(s) on your plan shares or upload/download. Then the access to the files is many thousands of times a day, you may exceed the limit. Let say you exceed the limit.

What then?

1. We do not delete your files because of this reason.
2. If you or your team shares files and folders, they will not be publicly available anymore, the system will unpublish the shares.
3. The system removes all privileges of the users.
4. Your bill might be higher than the limit you set as the system runs periodically.

When this happens, you need to either increase the limit, remove the limit or wait until the end of the billing period to be able to use the system features again. Once the limit does not apply anymore, if you need to re-publish(share) the same files and folders. Then you will need to create new shared links manually or via API and send them again to the people who need them, etc.

Ondemand traffic too high!

As you may already know, in our system you can create public links. This is indeed a very useful function. People will be able to access those links by anyone who is given the link. For security they can not be scanned, but they are public. This means that if you make a big file public in social media or if someone malicious get’s hold of your public links, they can inflate your bill. In this case your bill might be very high.

Ondemand Product Afterword

Fists that system notifications and warnings will be sent to you via email about your usage and consumption as you configure it in your account. Now, we recommend you to check your billing dashboard frequently. This will help you monitor your team’s current consumption if you have worries about the bills.

Our recommendation of this product is if ether of the following is your case. Let say you do not know how much you really need to store en traffic. Second in case you have very asymmetric consumption patterns. For instance a website that serves a lot of content, but do not need to store a lot. Other case is when you have very low consumption or very high consumption.

Aside from the Ondemand product you can also use other FIXED price products. Finally here is a detailed description of all of our products.