[translation] introduce OPTA. Terrain on rails

RunX company Ankur - Dahia's guest article

Today's engineers work in a permanent binary opposition between good news and bad news . One side , The tools they have 、 Infrastructure and capabilities gave their engineers a decade ago what they might consider superpower capabilities . Containerization and virtualization , Continuous integration / Continuous delivery , Microservices and serverless ,Kubernetes, And the incredible development of the cloud that runs through all these things .

On the other hand , Engineers must also manage all these things to some extent . Just like any once had to configure Kubernetes Cluster or manage Terraform People can tell you that , It's bad news .

Writing code and business logic is only part of the work of engineers today -- They also have to learn how to make their code different 、 Working in a constantly changing operating environment . To make everything work in the cloud , Engineers must use at least a dozen tools . Complexity is written into the job description .

Of course , Unless you work for one of the cloud computing giants . These companies have entire teams dedicated to creating customized infrastructure , Most of what engineers have to do DevOps Work automation , So they just need to worry about writing and shipping code . After all, this is their best job .

However , Except for those companies , This ability does not exist . For engineering resources less than Facebook or Google The company of , This forms a very important survival choice . Using image Kubernetes Such an infrastructure platform , And adopt 、 To configure 、 The hard work of operation and maintenance , Or miss the benefits it offers .

Infrastructure is code " To save the world ...... To some extent

Infrastructure is code （IaC） Solutions are now widely accepted as the standard for configuring and managing cloud infrastructure , and Terraform Widely regarded as the best in the market IaC platform -- It does .Terraform Is a very advanced software , To be frank , It is one of the more amazing innovations in this era of Cloud Computing .

It also Very complicated . It is notorious for requiring deep infrastructure expertise to manage , So every use Terraform All companies need an in-house expert to solve their complex problems . Whether it's Terraform Of DSL（HashiCorp Configuration language ） Steep learning curve , Or manage its infamous error module , Even the executive management network CIDR Or modify low-level tasks such as routing tables ,Terraform It is not easy to learn or maintain .

Opta It's a new one " Infrastructure is code ".

We developed Opta To help eliminate this complexity .Opta Is a new type of infrastructure, namely code framework , It enables engineers to use advanced structures , Instead of getting lost in low-level cloud configurations . This is an open source tool , We developed it after seeing the problems handled by the engineering team due to the complexity of the infrastructure .

We are right. Opta Our goal is to make it possible for anyone to 30 Establish and run automation in minutes 、 Security 、 Scalable infrastructure . We hope to give it to any engineering team , Whether it's 2 People or 200 Human team , Provide with Google or Facebook The same infrastructure advantages as companies , Instead of investing in infrastructure or DevOps The engineer .

An engineer can set an automatic extension Docker Containers , adopt 10 Row configuration and RDS Database dialog , Instead of spending hours figuring out Amazon's virtual private cloud 、AWS Identity and access management 、Kubernetes、 Elastic load balancing and other details .

Opta There is a huge module library （ Such as EKS、RDS、DynamoDB、GKE、Cloud SQL, And even Datadog Third party services ）, Engineers can put these modules together , Build their ideal infrastructure stack . These modules are designed by infrastructure experts , Follow best safety practices , And it is built for production level and interoperability .

Opta Based on the Terraform above , It is designed so that engineers will not be locked in our products . Anyone can write custom Terraform, You can even use Opta Generated Terraform And work independently .

We set up Opta It is to provide a " Build your own infrastructure stack " Framework , This framework applies to everyone , Not just DevOps The engineer .

Our main goal now is to build a dynamic Opta User community , So we can learn from each other , Build new and better features , And hope to make the complexity of infrastructure a thing of the past . welcome stay Slack Join us on , or stay Github Check out Opta To learn more about .