Announcing the Open Beta of Infrahub.
In This Article
I’ll be recapping the Infrahub Overview webinar delivered by Pete Crocker, Director – Solution Architecture and Wim Van Deun, Senior Solution Engineer.
Introduction to Infrahub
In the world of infrastructure automation, complexity often leads to frustration. Organizations face challenges in maintaining their automation stacks, leading to tech debt and inefficiencies. Infrahub from OpsMill aims to address these challenges by providing a comprehensive platform that integrates various aspects of infrastructure management into a single, cohesive solution.
Infrahub is an innovative infrastructure automation platform designed to deliver a source of truth with an extendable schema, versioning, and native continuous integration capabilities. It was developed by OpsMill, a company founded by experts who recognized the need for a more reliable and efficient infrastructure automation solution.
The Genesis of Infrahub
About seven years ago, founder Damien Garros began exploring ways to solve the fundamental challenges faced by organizations in developing and maintaining infrastructure automation. He teamed up with Raphael Maunier, who had encountered similar challenges in his previous roles. Together, they built a team of automation experts to create Infrahub, which was released on GitHub in June 2024.
The Current State of Network Automation
According to EMA Research, many organizations investing in automation are not satisfied with their results. Only 20% of surveyed teams expressed happiness with their source of truth, which is crucial for infrastructure automation. The prevalent issue is the creation of a “Frankenstack” of open-source and commercial tools, leading to complexity and fragility.
Challenges in Maintaining Homegrown Automation Stacks
Organizations often start their automation journey with simple goals and quick wins. However, as they scale, they encounter challenges such as:
- Fragmentation of data across different tools and vendors
- Lack of visibility and traceability
- Increased maintenance and update times
- Complex integrations that create tech debt
These challenges make it difficult to maintain a reliable and efficient automation stack, ultimately leading to dissatisfaction among teams.
Infrahub's Solution
Infrahub addresses the issues faced by organizations by providing a unified platform that combines infrastructure data and GitOps principles. It allows teams to build a reliable and sustainable automation process without the complexity of maintaining a fragmented stack.
Key Features of Infrahub
- Extendable Schema and Data Models: Infrahub allows organizations to define their schema and data models for their infrastructure according to their needs. This flexibility enables teams to adapt and expand over time.
- Version Control: Infrahub incorporates git-like concepts such as branching, diff, and merge, allowing teams to maintain an immutable history of changes and facilitate peer review.
- Transformations: Infrahub can generate artifacts in various formats, including device-specific configurations and documentation, based on changes made in the database.
- Continuous Integration Pipeline: The built-in CI pipeline validates changes and ensures that only relevant artifacts are regenerated, streamlining the deployment process.
Understanding Data Management Challenges
Data management is a critical challenge in many organizations. Infrahub addresses this by providing a central repository for teams to access and manage their infrastructure data. This centralized approach enhances visibility, traceability, and compliance.
The Importance of an Extendable Schema and Data Model
Organizations require adaptability in their data management. Infrahub’s extendable schema and model allows teams to start small and evolve their infrastructure as needed. This adaptability is crucial for modeling complex systems such as service catalogues, cloud environments, and Kubernetes based deployments.
Version Control: Enhancing Collaboration
Infrahub’s version control features facilitate collaboration among teams. By allowing users to create branches for planned changes, teams can review and merge changes efficiently. This process not only improves accountability but also simplifies troubleshooting.
Understanding Data Management Challenges
Data management is a critical challenge in many organizations. Infrahub addresses this by providing a central repository for teams to access and manage their infrastructure data. This centralized approach enhances visibility, traceability, and compliance.
The Importance of an Extendable Schema and Model
Organizations require adaptability in their data management. Infrahub’s extendable schema and model allows teams to start small and evolve their infrastructure as needed. This adaptability is crucial for modeling complex systems such as service catalogues, cloud environments, and Kubernetes based deployments.
Version Control: Enhancing Collaboration
Infrahub’s version control features facilitate collaboration among teams. By allowing users to create branches for planned changes, teams can review and merge changes efficiently. This process not only improves accountability but also simplifies troubleshooting.
Transformations and CI Pipeline
Transformations play a vital role in Infrahub’s functionality. They allow users to pull relevant data from the external sources or the internal database and render it in a structured manner, generating device-specific configurations and other necessary artifacts. The CI pipeline ensures that all relevant data and templates are validated for each change, improving the overall efficiency of the deployment process.
Integrating with Existing Tools
Infrahub is designed to integrate seamlessly with existing tools and frameworks. It can sync data with other sources, such as ServiceNow CMDB, and works with deployment tools like Ansible and Terraform. This integration capability ensures that Infrahub can fit into an organization’s existing ecosystem without requiring a complete overhaul.
Real-World Use Cases
Infrahub is already being utilized in various real-world use cases:
- Unified Source of Truth: By combining Infrahub’s extensible schema and sync capabilities, organizations can consolidate their infrastructure and business data into a single source of truth.
- Scaling Automation Across Teams: Infrahub enables multiple teams to automate processes simultaneously, reducing the reliance on a small group of automation experts.
- Design-Driven Automation: Organizations can create service catalogs that allow other teams to request and implement changes safely and efficiently.
Getting Started with Infrahub
Infrahub is available on GitHub, allowing users to spin up an instance quickly using GitHub Codespaces or locally via Docker and Kubernetes. The platform also offers extensive documentation and tutorials to help new users get started effectively.
Future Developments
OpsMill is committed to building a robust open-source community around Infrahub. They plan to release a production-ready version of the platform later this year, along with a SaaS offering for users who prefer a fully managed solution.
