Read on Twitter
The @PulumiCorp Automation API is here! This is a fundamental shift that will change the way you think about building for the cloud.
http://pulumi.com/blog/automation-api
http://pulumi.com/blog/automation-api
Infrastructure as code has given us reproducibility, self-documenting infra, and reduced risk with increased agility. But all of this has come at the cost of flexibility. DSLs are rigid, they don’t play nice with the rest of your system, they don’t integrate.
I joined Pulumi because of @funcofJoe and @lukehoban’s vision for the future of cloud engineering - Infra as Software. All of the power of IaC, but we get back what we gave up in tools, composability, and fundamental software engineering! Automation API is the next incarnation.
So what is it? A set of APIs that let you deploy infra on the fly, in any context, without a human-centric CLI-driven workflow. Wrap you static website IaC with an HTTP server, and 
boom you’ve built your own SaaS:
boom you’ve built your own SaaS:
You still have your declarative program backing each site (or unit of infra), but Automation API enables you to embed the Pulumi engine and stamp out infrastructure programmatically. Provision in response to new user sign up, build your own PaaS… the possibilities are limitless.
What are folks using it for already?
Platform APIs - whether that’s internal app platform or external IaaS/PaaS/SaaS products,Automation API gives you the tools to take your infra out of the CLI and put it at your user's fingertips.
Complex Workflow Orchestration - Distributed systems have enough complexity without the tools getting in our way. Deploying a database and migrating the schema don’t have to be two separate workflows glued together with bash: https://github.com/pulumi/automation-api-examples/tree/main/go/database_migration
Cloud Development Frameworks: Going from working application to running cloud software is a monumental undertaking. Automation API enables frameworks to abstract away infra. This code __just runs__ in the cloud when you `yarn start`, no strings attached:
I expect to see a new wave of application frameworks that ambiently create their own infrastructure.
https://github.com/pulumi/halloumi
https://github.com/pulumi/halloumi
Supercharged Ops Tooling - Our jobs are getting more demanding, and automation is our leverage to stay ahead. How would you go about building something like `eksctl`? A mountain of requests to the AWS REST control plane is untenable.
Build your own custom CLIs and tools by embedding the pulumi engine. @briggsl built `aksctl` in an afternoon at our internal hackathon: https://github.com/jaxxstorm/aksctl/blob/main/cmd/aksctl/create/cluster/cli.go
Automation API was a hot topic at last week’s @PulumiCorp hackathon. The consensus was that it makes you think differently about Infrastructure as Software. You architect your systems differently. It breaks down barriers that didn’t need to be there in the first place.
Go read the blog, it says it better than I can in Nx280 chars. Needless to say, this is going to accelerate cloud engineering.
http://pulumi.com/blog/automation-api
http://pulumi.com/blog/automation-api
