Automation

API SDKs, Terraform providers and automation tools for an infrastructure visibility platform

Who the client is

The client is an internet-based enterprise established in the 2010s. It started from the recognition that the networking landscape needed a scalable, robust, user-friendly and cost-effective infrastructure visibility solution. Its network traffic intelligence platform integrates network operations, performance, security and business intelligence. Built on a big data engine and available as a public or private SaaS, it gives users high-resolution views of their network traffic enriched with application and business insights, and links every network event to metrics such as revenue, costs, customer and user experience, performance and risk.

The challenge

The challenge was to construct a suite of auxiliary utilities that enable seamless onboarding of infrastructure onto the client’s observability platform, integration with its API, and proprietary metric visibility tools. The most critical part was API SDKs for Python and Go, giving developers a consistent and concise interface and shielding them from changes in the evolving REST and gRPC APIs.

What the utilities had to cover:

Onboarding customer infrastructure onto the platform.
Integration with the REST and gRPC APIs as they evolve.
Visibility tools for the platform’s metrics.

What we did

Developed API SDKs for Python and Go.
Created custom Terraform providers on the Go SDK, for an infrastructure as code approach to configuring services on the client’s end.
Established automated onboarding tools, using the Terraform providers and Python code, for hundreds of public cloud accounts.
Developed a reference web application on the Python SDK that visualizes SLA adherence from the client’s synthetic mesh test data.
Developed a suite of peripheral libraries, plugins and scripts for the platform, across frontend, backend and DevOps work.

How we built it

Each tool builds on the one before it, starting from the SDKs.

SDKs API SDKs for Python and Go give developers a consistent and concise interface and shield them from changes in the evolving REST and gRPC APIs.
Terraform providers Custom Terraform providers built on the Go SDK bring an infrastructure as code approach to configuring services on the client’s end.
Automated onboarding The Terraform providers, with some Python code, power onboarding tools that configure and onboard hundreds of public cloud accounts of the client’s customers automatically.
Reference visualization A reference web application built on the Python SDK visualizes SLA adherence from the client’s synthetic mesh test data. It gives the client’s customers scaffolding for developing their own metrics visualization applications in-house.

Outcomes

Business
Hundreds of cloud accounts onboarded
Onboarding tools configure and onboard hundreds of customer cloud accounts automatically, significantly reducing the time and effort it takes.
Made possible
Visualization tools in hours
Visualization tools for the platform’s metrics created in a matter of hours, starting from a reference application built on the Python SDK.
Technical
A stable interface to evolving APIs
SDKs give developers easy, consistent access to the REST and gRPC APIs in their preferred language, minimizing errors.