Simplifying DNS Management and Automation with HashiCorp and UltraDNS

As IT infrastructure has grown increasingly complex, so has the task of managing DNS strategy. At Vercara, we’ve partnered with HashiCorp to address the evolving needs of our UltraDNS customers as they transition DNS management to a cloud operating model. ​​​ 

​​​​​ ​​​HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure.​​​​ 

​​​​​For the DevOps teams tasked with facilitating this transition – many of whom rely on HashiCorp’s ​products​​​ to define, build​,​ and version infrastructure safely and efficiently – reducing manual coordination across the elements of the application delivery lifecycle is critical.  

But what goes into the DevOps process, and how can our partnership with HashiCorp help?  

What is DevOps? 

As a methodology, DevOps has been around for over a decade. It was born from the idea of delivering applications and services at high velocity by creating change across cultural mindsets, practices, and tools to foster collaboration between the development and operations teams. Through DevOps, these teams work together to adopt iterative software development practices, automate processes, deliver more frequent product releases, and establish programmable infrastructure deployment and maintenance practices with built-in quality and security.  

DevOps provides critical business and technical benefits such as improved team collaboration, faster product delivery, greater scalability and availability, more stable operating environments and issue resolution, and reduced complexity. ​Just as​​​ important​​, DevOps also encourages the approach of continuous improvement and automation by utilizing the following best practices: 

• Communication and ​c​​​ollaboration: This is one of the key cultural aspects of DevOps as it brings together the workflows and responsibilities of development with the operations of software delivery. 
• Continuous ​i​​​ntegration: This practice encourages developers to continuously merge their code changes into a repository where automated builds and tests are run. 
• Continuous ​d​​​elivery: This practice automates the delivery of code changes, testing, and preparing for a preproduction or staging environment. 
• Infrastructure as ​c​​​ode: Through this practice, infrastructure is provisioned and managed using code and software development techniques​​ to automate the elements required for a software release. This is where our partnership with Hashi​C​​​orp comes in handy. ​HashiCorp Terraform is the world’s most widely used multi-cloud provisioning product. Whether you’re deploying to AWS, ​​Microsoft ​​Azure, Google Cloud, other clouds, or an on-premises datacenter, Terraform can be a single control plane, using infrastructure as code for infrastructure automation.​  
• Monitoring: This practice applies continuous monitoring of the code in operation and the underlying infrastructure that supports it. ​T​​​he information on bugs or issues then makes its way back to the development team. 

 Following the April 2022 launch of our first integration with HashiCorp, the UltraDNS Terraform Provider, we’ve now launched a second, UltraDNS-CTS.   

In helping to simplify and automate cloud deployments and reduce the total cost of ownership of DNS services, partners like HashiCorp play an important part in ensuring Vercara stays true to its singular mission of safeguarding the digital infrastructure and online presence of our global enterprise customers.  

​​​​​​​Adam Rowan, ​P​​​artner ​A​​​lliances ​M​​​anager at HashiCorp, shared his perspective on the growing partnership between our two companies and dig into some of the wide-ranging benefits we can deliver to support DevOps teams throughout the development lifecycle. 

What​​ is Hashi​C​orp? 

​​​HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments.​​     ​​ 

How does HashiCorp’s infrastructure provisioning enable DNS teams to automate DNS workflows? 

​​HashiCorp ​Consul-Terraform-Sync (CTS)​​​​​, a Terraform module that leverages Consul’s service discovery catalog,​​ ​automate​s​ tasks across network devices that are traditionally handled manually by networking operators.  

How does HashiCorp’s multi-cloud infrastructure automation software improve DevOps automation? 

​​By leveraging changes that occur in ​​HashiCorp ​​Consul’s service catalog (as warranted by app team needs), operators can accelerate application delivery by automating DNS-related tasks and thus enabling end-to-end automation.

​To learn more about how UltraDNS can help your organization simplify its DNS management and automation, visit the Authoritative DNS page.