Enterprise cloud provider Tier 3 will announce today a platform agnostic toolset that automates the design and deployment of complex environments and applications onto their cloud-based services. Called the Environment Engine, the platform-as-a-service is uniquely aimed at enabling the creation and use of best practice templates to enable the automation of various Microsoft and Linux server deployments.
This saves costs and enables applications to be deployed faster, more consistently and with less possibility of human error. Environments can include Microsoft SharePoint Server, Exchange Server (both single server and High Available) and a variety of other Web-based app servers.
Tier 3 calls each of these deployments a blueprint, and they are set up using their Web-based control console. Each deployment can be configured to be private, shared publically or limited sharing to specific individuals. You can add multiple VMs to a single blueprint so that an entire Web app can be brought up with a single command, even though it is deployed across multiple Web, database, and app servers on different VMs. You can script out an entire installation, adding monitoring, backups, firewall rule sets – in short, you can replicate in the cloud your entire computing environment.
While other cloud providers offer the ability to group and stage servers together, Tier 3 can make this much more sophisticated. ISVs can use this to build entire environments for their customers with multiple servers.
This will be added to Tier 3’s service offerings in October. At that time, there won’t be any additional charge for the service, as like other Tier 3 services you only incur costs when you deploy resources. Tier 3 customers include some very large-scale cloud operators including NetApp and Microsoft.
