As we prepare to kick off the biggest cloud industry conference of the year, the Quali team wanted to share a sneak preview of the updates our teams will be sharing as sponsors of AWS re:Invent 2023.
Interested in seeing some of these updates in person? You can book a demo at our AWS re:Invent booth here.
For a brief introduction to Quali Torque, watch this 5-minute demo:
Here are some of the updates we’re excited to share at AWS re:Invent 2023.
Drag-and-drop IaC orchestration
One of the most common challenges we help users solve involves orchestrating complex application environments that involve multiple IaC modules.
Especially when individual components of an environment are defined using different IaC tools, orchestration can be a manual, time-consuming process that slows every function that relies on it.
For years, Torque has allowed DevOps and IT teams to leverage their IaC modules, normalize the cloud resource definitions, and create new YAML files defining a blueprint model for an environment deployment—including all infrastructure services and dependencies needed.
This blueprint model enables the developer productivity that we support. Once the blueprint is defined, developers can launch the environment defined therein with just a few clicks.
Our new visual designer for environment blueprints will allow IaC engineers to create drag-and-drop modules based on their resource configurations defined in Git. From there, Torque’s blueprint designer will allow IaC developers to drag-and-drop those modules to define new environment blueprints.
This will accelerate productivity by lowering the barrier for DevOps engineers to orchestrate environments blueprints regardless of their experience with IaC.
AWS CloudFormation automation & management
Our users can now leverage their CloudFormation templates defined in Git to:
- Define reusable blueprints for complete environments, including all cloud resources and dependencies needed to deliver them
- Allow one-click deployment so developers and other teams can launch those environments as frequently as needed
- Integrate pre-configured environments into CLI, IDE, and CI/CD tools
- Empower developers to perform Day-2 actions on cloud resources defined in CloudFormation templates so they don’t need to request access via DevOps
- Automatically detect when CloudFormation configurations drift from the desired state, with a one-click option to reconcile that drift and update resources within a live environment
Terraform resiliency & automation
New updates to our support for Terraform-defined infrastructure are designed to remove manual work from the DevOps and IT teams responsible for managing IaC.
After recognizing that many transient errors when launching infrastructure defined in Terraform would correct themselves after simply re-trying the command, our product team automated that step.
Now, Torque will recognize when a failed Terraform command is the result of a transient error, then will automatically retry that command to ensure the environment launches as planned.
Another recent update will help our users automate validation of Terraform code upon launch. Admins can now automate the execution of custom code after the terraform plan command, including code to validate that Terraform code against third-party or in-house security tools.
Both updates have shown improved success rate for environment launches that leverage infrastructure defined via Terraform, resulting in improved efficiency across the board.
Automated cloud cost optimization recommendations
Since Torque orchestrates and deploys our users’ cloud infrastructure, the platform can also monitor the activity and costs of that infrastructure. This has led to some interesting insights.
Using a machine-learning engine, Torque will automatically detect cloud resources that users have deployed via the platform but which are inactive, with automated alerts to notify staff.
Torque’s new Opportunity Savings dashboard will calculate the combined financial impact of these inactive resources and allow admins to sort and prioritize based on those that are most expensive.
The new Realized Savings dashboard calculates the impact of all measures taken based on these insights, and is now accessible alongside the Opportunity Savings dashboard as part of the account overview cost dashboard.
New cloud cost governance capabilities
Torque’s approach to cloud governance leverages the platform’s functionality as the deployment layer for the user’s cloud infrastructure. In that role, the platform can automatically deny deployments based on custom rules set by admins.
One new example is the limit to concurrent environment deployments.
Those looking to keep cloud costs to a minimum could benefit by preventing users from launching multiple concurrent environments—since they will typically only use one at a time.
By setting a policy to limit the number of concurrent environments that users can launch, Torque admins can prevent anyone from running more cloud infrastructure than needed at any given time.
With this policy in place, any attempted violation will be denied automatically—requiring the user to terminate their active environments before launching a new one.
The ability to apply this policy to a single space allows further customization based on the needs of the various teams in the platform.
To see these and other updates in action during AWS re:Invent, book your 15-minute demo here.