Every Cloud has a beneficial lining
A couple of months into my career at Butterfly Data, I was assigned with understanding how to deploy SAS Viya onto Microsoft Azure. With previous experience of deploying applications onto on-premise infrastructure and certification in Microsoft Azure Fundamentals, this was the perfect opportunity to get “stuck in” and bolster my skills in the ever-growing Cloud marketplace.
How do you deploy applications onto the cloud? What tools need to be utilised? What skills are required? These are some of the questions that come to mind when faced with this assignment. By following the SAS Viya Deployment Workshop for Azure training module, I was able to increase my knowledge and skills of what is involved when deploying applications onto the Cloud.
The Viya deployment consists of three main steps. The first step requires configuration of an Azure instance to support automation scripts. These automation scripts are then used to provision the infrastructure in the second step. The final step involves deploying the Viya software.
The following tools are utilised: an Azure subscription with the ability to launch virtual machines, configure infrastructure and define a contributor role; a terminal emulator, such as MobaXterm; a Kubernetes monitoring tool, such as Lens; and a SAS Viya license.
Skills required are: the ability to navigate around Azure and understanding of resources available, knowledge of using a terminal emulator to connect to Azure resources and the capability to use Linux command line.
The technologies used include: YUM (software package management), Git (version control), Docker (deployment control using containers), Azure CLI (command line interface to manage Azure resources), Terraform (scripts to create infrastructure), Ansible (provide deployment configuration), and Kubernetes (managing containers).
The outcome of successfully completing this assignment was an increased understanding of what is involved when deploying applications onto the Cloud and insight into a plethora of technologies. Amazingly, this was all done remotely. I didn’t have to physically purchase, collect, and then build any hardware infrastructure. Deployment was a single process that pushed application configuration to the relevant infrastructure, with no need for server-by-server deployment. Thanks to Cloud technology!
As in most cases the learning doesn’t stop there and follow up to this assignment will include: understanding other methods of installation, such as using SAS Deployment Operator, which provides an automated method for deploying and updating; costing specification of hosting SAS Viya on Azure infrastructure; and deploying on Butterfly Data Azure infrastructure. When I get stuck into these, I’ll be sure to give you another run down in another blog.
