Leverage Workflows

Cloudaware workflows (flows) is a technology for automating processes based on changes detected in CMDB. Using flows, customers can quickly adopt automation in all domains of digital infrastructure operations at scale.

1 Architecture
2 Use Cases
- 2.1 Asset Management
- 2.2 Cost Management
- 2.3 Compliance
- 2.4 Incident Management
3 Advantages

Architecture

The Flow Builder provides an easy-to-use point-and-click user interface to create automation flows.

Flows consist of entry criteria and actions. Entry criteria is a specific configuration state of an entity in CMDB. Action is the process an operator would like to initiate once entry criteria have been met.

Use Cases

Infrastructure operators leverage flows to address configuration changes, spending spikes, and security compliance violations. Here are sample use cases:

Asset Management

Problem: Expired certificate causes business disruption

Solution: Create a time-based flow that will notify you to update the certificate 30 days before expiration

Asset: ACM Certificate

Criteria: Expiration Date < 30 from Current Date

Action: Send an email and create a JIRA ticket

Cost Management

Problem: AWS Forecasted Spend exceeds the preset budget value

Solution: Deploy a flow to send an email and Slack notifications to cost center owner

Asset: AWS Account

Criteria: Forecasted EoM or EoY Spend > Budget

Action: Trigger Email and Webhook for Slack

Compliance

Problem: AWS S3 Bucket allows non-encrypted traffic

Solution: Create a flow that will perform an auto-remediation process if the bucket owner has not addressed the issue within 7 days

Asset: Compliance Policy Violation

Criteria: Compliance Policy Violation Age > 7 days

Action: Webhook to trigger AWS Lambda auto-remediation function

Incident Management

Problem: Publicly facing instance has critical vulnerabilities

Solution: Create a ticket for the SecOps engineer in charge

Asset: EC2 Instance

Criteria: Public IP Is Not Null AND Critical Vulnerabilities > 0

Action: Webhook to create ServiceNow or PagerDuty Incident

Advantages

No code: simple low-key UI to let you play around with no programming skills required

Time-conditioned actions: set up a sequence for flow actions according to your business logic

Multi-source triggers: trigger flows using data from supported integrations