Cloud Custodian: An Open Source Cloud Compliance and Management Tool
Today, I am going to take a deep dive into an open-source GitHub project named 'Cloud Custodian'. Its main purpose is to ensure the security, governance, and management of cloud environments such as AWS, Azure, and GCP. Given the relevance and importance of robust cloud management solutions in today's digital landscape, Cloud Custodian's offerings are nothing short of significant.
Project Overview:
Cloud Custodian aims to offer a unified, consistent solution for cloud security, cost optimization, and governance. Its objective is to address the problem of multiple cloud service mismanagement due to countless individualized policies. The principal users of Cloud Custodian are IT professionals, System Administrators, and DevOps teams in organizations of all sizes who deal with cloud infrastructure management.
Project Features:
Cloud Custodian brings several exciting features to the table, including policy enforcement that empowers users to enforce a desired state for resources, cost management to handle underutilized resources efficiently, and security and compliance, ensuring the cloud environment meets organizational policies.
For instance, a use case could be a policy that turns off idle compute instances automatically during non-work hours, which contributes to substantial cost savings.
Technology Stack:
Cloud Custodian leverages Python as its primary programming language, due to its simplicity and broad usage within the cloud-based systems management realm. Being built around serverless computing, it also uses AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, and GCP Cloud Functions for ad-hoc or regular policy enforcement. Cloud Custodian utilizes notable libraries such as Boto3 and Botocore for AWS, azure-sdk for Azure, and google-cloud-sdk for GCP.
Project Structure and Architecture:
The project follows a standard Python project structure with a modular approach. Each module targets different cloud service providers and their services. They all converge at a common point – the policy enforcement engine, which is the heart of Cloud Custodian. It also employs event-driven architecture, catering well to dynamic, rapidly changing cloud environments.
