Cloudify 6.4 Release Notes

• Availability and Accessibility
  • Blueprint Marketplace
  • Upgraded User Experience
  • Token-based Authentication
  • ServiceNow Integration
  • CI/CD Integration Enhancement
  • CLI Binary
  • Supported Platforms
• Operations and Orchestrations Improvements
  • Auto Labeling
  • Terraform Ecosystem
    • Onboarding Terraform Templates – Terraform Wrapper
    • Terratag
    • Infracost
    • TFsec
    • TFLint
  • Day-2 Updates and Enhancements
    • Check Status
    • Check Drift
    • Resource Changes, Reconfiguration, Updates
  • Heal
  • Input Parameters
  • Workflow Availability
• Blueprint Development Improvements – DSL
  • Composer
    • Resources Visualization
    • Properties Presentation and Editing
    • Input and Output Definitions
  • CFY Linter
  • DSL 1.4
  • Cloudify Manager 6.4 supports DSL 1.4 which brings new features to better manage your blueprints, Day-0, and Day-2 operations.
    • Optimization of Input Workflow Parameters Types
    • Workflow Availability Rules
  • Plugin Updates

Availability and Accessibility 

Blueprint Marketplace 

The Cloudify Marketplace will get your deployment started with dozens of blueprint options to choose from, featuring cloud providers and provisioning resources. For example, Terraform, Helm, AWS, and Ansible, and many others, which can help deploy multi-tier applications. 

Upgraded User Experience

We upgraded the interface and functionality to improve deployment management. 

In version 6.4, the ‘Services and Environments’ are organized by deployment listing starting with the root object in the deployment view. 

• The workflow listing displays only the workflows available for deployment execution.

• In the topology view, we improved the visual representation of the resource. The new display presents a cleaner layout with icons corresponding to the cloud provider resources. 

• The name of the tenant is always visible at the top of the page.

Token-based Authentication

Integrate with Cloudify using tokens that provide access to Cloudify’s API. Create and manage tokens from the new UI interface, CLI, or API.

Learn more: Tokens Documentation

ServiceNow Integration 

The integration with ServiceNow enables organizations to automate infrastructure and environment delivery initiated from ServiceNow. The environment catalog was improved to better handle request inputs, added cloud configuration governance, and the Cloudify Manager connection validation on setup.

Learn More:  Documentation, Developer-Guide

CI/CD Integration Enhancement 

Enhanced integration with CICD pipelines by introducing an update to the Jenkins plugin, and Cloudify CLI.

Learn more: CI/DC Documentation

CLI Binary

The Command Line Interface with the Cloudify Manager is now available as a standalone executable for Mac OS or Linux. This will enable users to install the Cloudify CLI faster.

Supported Platforms

We now offer support for the RHEL8 Operating System.

Operations and Orchestrations Improvements

Auto Labeling

Keeping track of the resources and locating them on various providers is a challenge. We addressed this issue with auto labeling and tagging functionality. In version 6.4, the Cloudify Manager comes with pre-configured auto-tagging for deployed resources and labeling for blueprints. This enables users to locate blueprints and deployments by an infrastructure provider and resources at the provider by the name of the deployment that provisioned them.

Terraform Ecosystem

Lifecycle management of multiple resources provisioned by Terraform is a challenge Cloudify addresses for multiple users. In version 6.4, Cloudify developed multiple improvements and integrations of the Terraform ecosystem, enabling quick onboarding, resource tagging, security, and module integrity checks.

Learn more: Terraform Plugin Documentation

Onboarding Terraform Templates – Terraform Wrapper

In order to assist users with onboarding Terraform modules into Cloudify, the Terraform wrapper was introduced. In version 6.4, the wrapper received multiple upgrades extending its usability by enabling a simpler import with automatic detection of variables and outputs, importing local Terraform modules, and improved integration with the Secret store.

Learn more: Create Blueprint from Terraform Documentation

Terratag

Mapping between the resources in the cloud, environment, deployment, and internal/ external users is a challenge faced by anyone who has even a handful of provisioned resources.
Cloudiy provides the methodology and tools to tag the provisioned resources with metadata it has from the deployment. In version 6.4, this functionally is available for the resources provisioned with the Terraform plugin.

Infracost

The integration of the terracost into Cloudify’s Terraform plugin enables the user to estimate the costs of the resources provisioned by the Terraform module.

TFsec

The Terraform plugin supports security compliance checks and for the Terraform module by using theTFLin preventing or informing the application of an inappropriate module.

TFLint

Support of TFLint by the Cloudify Terraform plugin enables the deployment to verify the Terraform module before attempting to apply it on the first deployment or updating the module

Day-2 Updates and Enhancements 

Check Status

In version 6.4, Cloudify can check the status of a resource. The status of the resource’s summary is available in the deployment information. Based on the resource status Cloudify is able to make a decision on whether it’s required to heal the resource and if it’s available for an update.

Check Drift

Keeping track of the actual resource parameters versus the desired parameters set by the designer is achieved by the check drift workflow and interface. A comparison is made between the parameters set by Cloudify to the actual parameters on the deployed resource. The information from drift is available for each node and has a summary of the entire deployment. Knowing the drift enables Cloudify to make a decision on whether updating the node is required. 

Resource Changes, Reconfiguration, Updates

Performing changes, reconfiguring, or updating resources is a tough challenge that received our focused attention in version 6.4. Building on Cloudify’s strong modeling and workflow capabilities, the new sequence update enables cross-system updates that evaluate each resource state versus the expected and updated parameters. Based on the required updated parameters and the state of resources gathered by the check drift and the check status operation the optimal workflow sequence is determined.

Heal

Deleting and redeploying a resource is a heavy operation. In many instances, the managed resource can be healed by restarting, resuming, or refreshing. The new heal workflow will determine the resource status with the check status operation. If the heal option is available, Cloudify will heal the resource instead of destroying and recreating it.

Input Parameters

Running day-2 operations such as heal or scale of resources becomes straightforward by improving the selection of workflow parameters.

Workflow Availability

Improved operational clarity by presenting the workflows that are available to run on the deployment, based on the state of the resources and the types of resources found in the deployment.

Blueprint Development Improvements – DSL 

Composer

Cloudify is moving forward to optimize and speed up blueprint development to enable users to compose environments and services in a drag and drop environment. This will address the challenge of integration and composition of resources. In version 6.4, the composer received improvements and optimization in multiple areas.

Learn More: Composer Documentation

Resources Visualization

Improved representation of resources provided by the plugins into the plugins list. 

Properties Presentation and Editing

Presentation of resource properties and the ability to fill properties with functions and inputs.