Automation Agents using OpenShift

Role

Solution Architect

Project Overview

The goal of this project is to deploy UC4 agents within an OpenShift environment to streamline the management of automation workflows. By leveraging OpenShift’s container orchestration capabilities, this solution aims to ensure high availability, scalability, and efficient resource utilization for UC4 agents, enhancing automation reliability and performance.

Design

Objective & Key Results

Objective:
Deploy UC4 agents on OpenShift to enhance automation scalability, reliability, and operational efficiency while aligning with modern containerized deployment practices.

Key Results:

1. Containerization and Image Development

   • Develop a production-ready Docker image for UC4 agents with a build success rate of 100% within 30 days.

   • Ensure the image is fully optimized, with a size not exceeding 500MB and scan-free of critical vulnerabilities.

2. Deployment and Configuration on OpenShift

   • Successfully deploy UC4 agents as pods on OpenShift with all required configurations within 45 days.

   • Achieve a 99.9% uptime for UC4 agent pods post-deployment.

3. Scalability and Performance

   • Implement horizontal pod autoscaling (HPA) with a response time of fewer than 30 seconds to scale during peak loads.

   • Demonstrate the ability to handle a 50% increase in workload without manual intervention or performance degradation.

4. Networking and Security

   • Configure secure routes and policies for agent communication, ensuring zero unauthorized access incidents.

   • Use OpenShift Secrets and ConfigMaps to store sensitive data and environment configurations with 100% compliance to security best practices

5. Automation and CI/CD Integration

   • Create a fully automated CI/CD pipeline to build and deploy UC4 agent containers within 60 days.

   • Reduce the deployment time for UC4 agents from manual processes by 70%.

6. Monitoring and Logging

   • Integrate monitoring tools to track resource usage, uptime, and performance metrics with reporting every 5 minutes.

   • Implement centralized logging with 100% log data retention for at least 30 days for all UC4 agent pods.

7. Documentation and Training

   • Deliver complete deployment and troubleshooting documentation within 15 days of project completion.

   • Conduct two training sessions for team members on managing UC4 agents in OpenShift, with 80% attendee satisfaction.

Technologies Used

1. Containerization

• Docker: To create and package UC4 agent images with all necessary dependencies.

2. Orchestration and Deployment

• OpenShift:

  • To manage containerized UC4 agents as pods.

  • Provides features like auto-scaling, self-healing, and persistent storage.

• Kubernetes (underlying technology of OpenShift): For container orchestration.

3. Automation and CI/CD

• GitLab, OpenShift Pipelines:

  • For automating the build, test, and deployment process of UC4 agents.

5. Storage

• Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs): For storing UC4 agent logs and other data persistently in OpenShift.

6. Scripting and Programming

• Python: For automation scripts and integration tasks.

• Bash: For deployment and system configuration scripts.

7. Version Control

• Git: For source code and configuration management.

• GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket: For repository hosting and CI/CD integration.