Automation and tooling

Another core philosophy and practice of DevOps is automation. Automation focuses on the setup, configuration, deployment, and support of infrastructure and the applications that run on it. By using automation, you can set up environments more rapidly in a standardized and repeatable manner. The removal of manual processes is key to a successful DevOps strategy. Historically, server configuration and application deployment have been predominantly a manual process. Environments become non-standard, and reproducing an environment when issues arise is difficult.

The use of automation is critical to realizing the full benefits of the cloud. Internally, AWS relies heavily on automation to provide the core features of elasticity and scalability.

Manual processes are error prone, unreliable, and inadequate to support an agile business. Frequently, an organization may tie up highly skilled resources to provide manual configuration, when time could be better spent supporting other, more critical, and higher value activities within the business.

Modern operating environments commonly rely on full automation to eliminate manual intervention or access to production environments. This includes all software releasing, machine configuration, operating system patching, troubleshooting, or bug fixing. Many levels of automation practices can be used together to provide a higher level end-to-end automated process.

Automation has the following key benefits:

Automation is a cornerstone with AWS services and is internally supported in all services, features, and offerings.