Cisco and HashiCorp Join Forces to Deliver Infrastructure as Code Automation Across Hybrid Cloud – Cisco Blogs

I am excited today to share details of Cisco taking a huge leap forward in hybrid cloud automation that brings the key benefits of infrastructure as code (IaC) automation for IT Operations. What we are announcing is the availability of Cisco Intersight Service for HashiCorp Terraform, a new integrated solution and commercial offer, that resulted from our ongoing partnership with HashiCorp.

IaC automation has been popular for managing workloads in public clouds and by DevOps. Through this new service, IT Ops can leverage a consistent operations model for infrastructure and workloads resident across the edge, co-los, data centers, and public clouds. IT Ops users of Intersight now gain a tremendous advantage of being able to see what is being provisioned in public and private clouds through the tool they are already using for managing their enterprise infrastructure, i.e. Intersight.

This integration brings together leaders in public and private cloud automation. HashiCorp is a pioneer of IaC and HashiCorp Terraform is a widely adopted IaC platform for provisioning and management of any components of cloud infrastructure. Terraform Cloud Business is HashiCorp’s cloud service for enterprise customers delivered as a SaaS offering, and is the easiest way to use Terraform in production at any scale.

Cisco built Intersight several years ago primarily as an industry-leading infrastructure lifecycle management tool but with a vision to create a unified SaaS platform enabling a “cloud-first” strategy and easing the path to modernization for our customers. Here’s how we’ve been executing on this vision:

• We introduced Intersight Infrastructure Service in 2017, which brought a new level of automation with the Connected TAC Support, Advisories, Compliance Checks, and more
• Last October at our Partner Summit, we introduced several Intersight services and capabilities including:
  • Intersight Workload Optimizer that brings full-stack visibility from the app to infrastructure and full-stack optimization whether in the public cloud or on-premises
  • Intersight Kubernetes Service, which delivers a curated and managed container as a service platform for cloud native development
  • And Intersight Virtualization Service, which enables hypervisor agnostic common virtualization services

With its modular, SaaS architecture, we can continue to innovate on Intersight as a platform at rapid scale with new offers like Intersight Service for Terraform that combines infrastructure management and workload automation in a cloud-native way. And because Intersight and Terraform are both cloud-native, SaaS platforms, integrations like this are open, simplified, and seamless.

Benefits of Intersight Integration

Intersight Service for Terraform securely integrates with Terraform Cloud Business with single sign-on authentication and secure on-prem access that allows customers to access platforms such as Terraform Cloud Business through Intersight.

Integrations like this enable Intersight customers to enjoy end-to-end automation, which drives governance and consistency for self-service capabilities for developers and application teams that increases overall agility and reduces time to market. Intersight delivers this an open, cloud-agnostic approach driven by native public-cloud integrations and support for an ecosystem of third-party tooling. This allows developers and other IT stakeholders to continue using the platforms and software of their choice without disruption.

Specifically, Intersight Service for HashiCorp Terraform provides the following unique customer benefits:

1. Users can get a single, simple, and seamless experience for applying IaC to private and hybrid cloud
2. The entire solution is delivered as a secure SaaS, simplifying the customers’ management of hybrid clouds while at the same time ensuring security and reducing risk
3. Cisco will also offer centralized support across customer’s Intersight and HashiCorp Terraform Cloud Business environments under the Cisco Solution Support program

With HashiCorp Terraform Cloud Business and Intersight, ITOps can provide DevOps the same automation for on-premises resources that they use in the public cloud. This integration delivers simplicity by having Intersight manage the end-to-end lifecycle (deployments, upgrades, scaling, networking) of Terraform Agents on the Intersight Assist Appliance, which is a secure and hardened appliance. It also reduces the operational overhead of connecting IaC pipelines with infrastructure domain management. And it is extensible through Intersight Assist delivering a growing library of integrations with Terraform, Pure Storage, NetApp, Hitachi, and VMware to help up-level IT operations. These use cases and others enable customers to rapidly manage and provision private and public cloud resources end-to-end and do it safely through security that Intersight already provides.

Cisco and HashiCorp Commercial and Support Partnership

In addition to the integration between Intersight and Terraform, Cisco and HashiCorp are also announcing a multi-year commercial agreement under which Cisco will re-sell HashiCorp Terraform Cloud Business on the Cisco global pricing list under the Cisco DevNet SolutionsPlus program. Cisco will also offer single window support for Intersight and Terraform Cloud Business under the Cisco Solution Support program. This allows customers to simplify their buyer’s experience by consolidating their purchase and support for Intersight and Terraform Cloud Business as a single entity. We are planning to make Cisco Intersight Service for HashiCorp Terraform generally available in April.

Here is how Amith Nair, VP of Product Marketing at HashiCorp, describes the value of this integration: “We know customers have many options when they’re architecting today’s data centers. These customers need the best solutions available, not a monolithic, one-size-fits-all approach. Cisco and HashiCorp share a common vision for helping customers achieve a cloud operating model that enables agility, velocity, and self-service IT operations. This joint solution will allow customers to easily adopt an infrastructure as code model for private and hybrid clouds with Cisco Intersight Service for Terraform Cloud.”

And here are thoughts from one of our go-to-market partners, Brent Collins, senior director, Data Center Solutions at World Wide Technology: “Developers and traditional IT teams are under pressure to accelerate application innovation, improve development agility, and simplify infrastructure deployment and delivery. To deliver on this requirement, HashiCorp Terraform natively integrates with the Cisco Intersight offering to provide customers with a consistent IaC platform spanning any Terraform      provider-enabled private and public cloud infrastructure. This integration enables WWT to build modern multi-cloud architectures that drive transformational outcomes for our valued customers.”

Learn More at Cisco Live

There is no debate that it is becoming increasingly complex for IT Operations and DevOps teams to keep up with expanding cloud footprints and the diverse set of technologies required to develop and manage today’s infrastructure at scale. IaC enables IT Operations teams to embrace a DevOps model, accelerate application deployment, and monitor operations in a secure and predictable manner. Open IaC platforms, like Terraform, make it possible to programmatically configure data center and cloud infrastructures whether in public or private clouds.

For more information, please join me and Armon Dadgar, co-founder and chief technology officer at HashiCorp, as we discuss this and other topics at our iTalk session at Cisco Live 2021.

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