General

Gigansoft Ansible AWX Automatisation

Automating Infrastructure: Server Provisioning with vCenter and Network Backups with Ansible AWX

As enterprise IT infrastructure continues to grow in complexity, automation becomes a critical pillar of efficiency, consistency, and security. Leveraging tools like Ansible AWX and VMware vCenter, organizations can standardize server deployments and automate network device backups—minimizing manual errors and freeing up engineering time.

In this article, we’ll explore how to use Ansible AWX for:

• Automated VM provisioning through vCenter

• Scheduled configuration backups from switches and routers

• Centralized visibility and audit of all playbook executions

Whether you’re running a hybrid datacenter or a fully virtualized environment, combining Ansible with VMware and your network gear can deliver powerful results.

🔧 What is Ansible AWX?

Ansible AWX is the open-source, web-based interface for Ansible automation. It provides:

• Role-based access control

• Job templates and scheduling

• Real-time job output logs

• Git integration for playbook repositories

Think of it as your central DevOps control tower — enabling both sysadmins and network engineers to trigger, track, and report on all automation tasks.

🚀 Use Case 1: VM Provisioning with vCenter

Imagine you need to deploy dozens of virtual machines across multiple environments (test/dev/prod) with standardized specs, naming conventions, and network configurations. Manually doing this in vSphere is error-prone and time-consuming.

✅ Solution: Ansible + vCenter API

Using the community.vmware Ansible collection, you can automate the full lifecycle of VM provisioning:

• Create VM from a template

• Assign CPU, memory, and disk

• Attach to the proper network

• Customize hostname and IP via cloud-init or guest customization

🧩 Sample Playbook Snippet:

This playbook can be parameterized and run via a Job Template in AWX, using a web form to input variables like VM name, IP address, or template.

📅 Scheduling Deployments with AWX

With AWX, you can schedule VM provisioning based on events or recurring time slots — ideal for:

• Nightly build environments

• QA environments that reset weekly

• Disaster recovery testing VMs

You can also send webhook triggers from your CI/CD pipeline (e.g., Jenkins or GitLab) to AWX to auto-provision infrastructure during deployment workflows.

🌐 Use Case 2: Network Device Configuration Backups

Backing up your network device configurations regularly is essential for operational continuity and compliance. Manual CLI logins are not scalable — especially when managing dozens or hundreds of switches, routers, and firewalls.

✅ Solution: Ansible + SSH Backup Automation

By using Ansible with ios_config, juniper_junos_config, or cli_command modules, you can pull config files via SSH from network devices and save them to a centralized location.

📥 Example Playbook:

This playbook can run daily via a Scheduled Job Template in AWX, generating timestamped backups for audit and recovery purposes.

🔐 Security & Access Control

AWX enables role-based access control (RBAC) for both server and network teams:

• Network engineers can only run backup playbooks

• Infrastructure admins can deploy and manage VMs

• Read-only auditors can view logs and job histories

It also integrates with LDAP/Active Directory, so user management stays centralized.

📊 Logging and Reporting

Every job run in AWX generates detailed logs and result data. This makes compliance audits easier and helps debug failed tasks.

With AWX’s API, you can even forward logs to ELK Stack, Splunk, or Prometheus/Grafana dashboards.

💡 Key Benefits Summary

🧠 Conclusion

Combining Ansible AWX, vCenter, and network automation empowers IT teams to standardize processes, reduce risk, and save countless hours. Whether you’re deploying 10 servers or backing up 100 switches, these tools make infrastructure automation practical and maintainable — even within secure on-premise environments.

At Gigansoft, we specialize in helping organizations architect these solutions end-to-end. From AWX deployment to custom playbooks and vSphere integration, our team can automate your infrastructure safely and efficiently.

📩 Need help automating your infrastructure?
Let Gigansoft build your next on-prem automation stack. Contact us today for a tailored consultation.

General

Gigansoft OnPrem Devops Solution

Building a Robust On-Premise CI/CD Pipeline: Jenkins, Bitbucket, IIS, PowerShell, and Selenium in Action

In the age of cloud-native development, continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) have become the cornerstone of agile DevOps practices. However, for many enterprises — especially those with compliance, data residency, or internal infrastructure constraints — an on-premise CI/CD pipeline remains a strategic and necessary choice.

In this article, we’ll walk through how organizations can build a secure, automated, and efficient CI/CD environment using tools like Jenkins, Bitbucket, IIS, PowerShell, and Selenium — all hosted on-prem.

🔧 Why On-Premise CI/CD?

While cloud-based DevOps platforms offer convenience, on-premise CI/CD offers:

• Complete control over infrastructure

• Compliance with internal or industry data regulations

• Enhanced security for sensitive source code

• Seamless integration with internal legacy systems

Let’s explore how to set up a production-grade CI/CD system using proven open-source and Microsoft-native tools.

🔄 CI/CD Workflow Overview

A typical on-premise DevOps pipeline involves the following steps:

1. Code Commit & Version Control – Bitbucket

2. Build Automation & Orchestration – Jenkins

3. Artifact Packaging & Testing – Jenkins + Selenium

4. Deployment to Web Servers – PowerShell + IIS

5. Monitoring & Rollback Capabilities

Let’s dive deeper into each stage.

🗃️ Step 1: Source Code Management with Bitbucket Server

Bitbucket Server (formerly Stash) is a self-hosted Git repository management solution from Atlassian. It integrates smoothly with Jira, Jenkins, and local user directories (LDAP/AD).

Benefits:

• Fine-grained branch permissions

• Internal Git repo hosting behind firewalls

• Easy integration with Jenkins via Webhooks or API polling

Developers commit code changes to feature branches, which trigger Jenkins pipelines for build and test.

🔨 Step 2: Jenkins – The Heart of Automation

Jenkins remains the industry standard for CI/CD automation. Installed on-prem, it provides full control over build agents, plugin versions, and credentials management.

Use Cases in On-Prem DevOps:

• Multi-stage pipeline builds (via Jenkinsfile)

• Parallel testing using Jenkins agents

• Secure credentials management with HashiCorp Vault or Jenkins Secrets

Typical pipeline stages:

🖥️ Step 3: Deploying to Microsoft IIS using PowerShell

For .NET-based applications or enterprise web platforms, IIS remains a robust and proven web server. Using PowerShell, Jenkins can deploy builds directly to multiple IIS servers.

Example PowerShell Script:

You can integrate this deployment step directly in your Jenkinsfile using the powershell directive, ensuring deployments are fast, reliable, and scriptable.

🧪 Step 4: Automated Testing with Selenium

Testing is a critical part of the pipeline. Selenium is widely used for automated UI testing and can be easily integrated into Jenkins pipelines.

Typical Integration Includes:

• Running headless browser tests in Chrome/Firefox

• Generating HTML or JUnit-style test reports

• Triggering automated regression testing for every commit

Selenium Grid can be hosted on-prem to distribute tests across machines and browsers, ensuring cross-platform coverage.

🔄 Rollbacks and Safe Deployments

By integrating versioned artifacts and Git tagging in Bitbucket, rollback strategies become seamless. For instance, Jenkins can store build artifacts in a shared folder or Artifactory, and rollback deployments can be scripted using tags or previous builds.

📈 Monitoring and Maintenance

Once your pipeline is up and running, ongoing observability is key. Consider integrating:

• Grafana + Prometheus for metrics (Jenkins agent usage, deployment duration)

• Windows Event Log + PowerShell for deployment logs

• Sentry / ELK Stack for application error tracking

💡 Best Practices for On-Prem DevOps

• Use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) for provisioning (e.g., PowerShell DSC or Terraform for VM setups)

• Implement RBAC and audit logs in Jenkins and Bitbucket

• Maintain offline copies of critical plugins and dependencies

• Regularly patch all tools and dependencies (especially Jenkins core/plugins)

✅ Conclusion

A well-designed on-premise CI/CD pipeline using Jenkins, Bitbucket, IIS, PowerShell, and Selenium can provide your organization with full control, compliance, and confidence in software delivery. While it requires more maintenance than SaaS platforms, the flexibility and security benefits often outweigh the overhead.

At Gigansoft, we help organizations architect, build, and optimize secure on-prem DevOps environments tailored to business needs. Whether you’re modernizing legacy systems or building greenfield pipelines, our DevOps engineers are ready to assist.

✉️ Interested in deploying your own on-prem DevOps pipeline?
Contact us today for a consultation.

General

Gigansoft Azure Cloud Solutions

Unlocking the Future with Azure Cloud Solutions: A Deep Dive into Microsoft’s Latest Innovations

In today’s digital-first landscape, organizations are constantly seeking ways to optimize infrastructure, improve agility, and reduce operational complexity. Microsoft Azure stands at the forefront of this transformation, offering robust, scalable, and secure cloud services that cater to businesses of all sizes. From AI-powered services to hybrid cloud flexibility and beyond, Azure Cloud Solutions continue to evolve — empowering enterprises to innovate faster and operate smarter.

Why Azure?

Microsoft Azure is not just a cloud provider; it’s an integrated platform of over 200 products and cloud services designed to bring new solutions to life. Its global presence, enterprise-grade security, and deep integration with Microsoft 365 and Dynamics 365 make it a preferred choice for businesses looking to migrate, modernize, and build cloud-native applications.

1. Azure Arc: Hybrid and Multicloud Made Seamless

One of the most revolutionary features introduced recently is Azure Arc, which allows businesses to manage their entire IT environment — across on-premises, edge, and multicloud — using a single control plane. Whether your servers are running on AWS, Google Cloud, or your own datacenter, Azure Arc extends Azure management and governance across them.

Use Cases:

• Centralized governance for hybrid resources

• Kubernetes cluster management outside of Azure

• Azure Policy and Security Center integration

2. Azure OpenAI Service: Enterprise-Ready AI Models

With the launch of Azure OpenAI Service, enterprises can now integrate GPT‑4, Codex, and other LLMs into their workflows — all hosted on Microsoft’s secure and compliant infrastructure.

Key Benefits:

• Build AI-powered chatbots and copilots

• Automate code reviews and technical documentation

• Extract insights from unstructured data with powerful NLP

All of this is delivered within a secure, private environment — making it ideal for industries with strict data regulations.

3. Azure Confidential Computing: Protect Data in Use

Data encryption at rest and in transit has long been standard. But what about data in use? Azure Confidential Computing addresses this gap by keeping data encrypted even during processing — using trusted execution environments (TEEs).

This is a game-changer for sectors like:

• Financial Services

• Healthcare

• Government and Defense

It’s particularly useful for applications like secure machine learning, digital asset management, and confidential analytics.

4. Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS): Scaling Microservices with Confidence

Azure Kubernetes Service continues to be the go-to managed container orchestration service for developers embracing microservices architectures. With the recent introduction of Fleet Manager, organizations can now manage thousands of AKS clusters at scale — across regions and tenants — with ease.

What’s New:

• Multi-cluster workload deployment

• Better node auto-scaling and workload placement

• Deeper integration with Azure Monitor and Log Analytics

5. Azure Stack HCI: The Future of Hybrid Cloud

Not every workload belongs in the public cloud. That’s why Azure Stack HCI offers an ideal solution for organizations looking to extend Azure capabilities to their on-premises datacenters.

Highlights:

• Virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) support

• Cost-effective backup and disaster recovery

• Consistent tools with Azure Portal and Windows Admin Center

With Azure Stack HCI, companies can run containerized apps, virtual machines, and Kubernetes clusters close to their data — while still enjoying Azure-based billing and updates.

6. Azure Communication Services (ACS): Build Custom Voice & Video Apps

As remote work and digital engagement become the norm, Azure Communication Services lets you embed voice, video, chat, and SMS into your apps using the same backend infrastructure that powers Microsoft Teams.

It’s perfect for:

• Telehealth platforms

• Customer service automation

• Secure internal communication tools

Security and Compliance: The Azure Advantage

With more than 90 compliance certifications (including ISO 27001, GDPR, HIPAA, and FedRAMP), Azure provides a security-first architecture with Zero Trust built-in. Services like Microsoft Defender for Cloud and Azure Sentinel ensure proactive threat detection and mitigation — across hybrid and multicloud environments.

Conclusion: Azure as Your Strategic Innovation Partner

The cloud journey is not just about lifting and shifting workloads. It’s about rethinking how your business operates, collaborates, and grows. With powerful tools like Azure Arc, Azure OpenAI, and Confidential Computing, Microsoft Azure is enabling businesses to drive innovation securely and sustainably.

Whether you’re a startup building your first app or an enterprise modernizing a global infrastructure — Azure provides the scalability, intelligence, and flexibility to meet your goals.

✉️ Ready to elevate your IT strategy with Azure?
At Gigansoft, we help organizations design, deploy, and optimize Azure environments tailored to their exact needs. Contact us today to start your cloud transformation journey.