Otter is an infrastructure automation tool, designed by the software company Inedo. Built specifically to support

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

, Otter utilizes

Infrastructure as Code Infrastructure as code (IaC) is the process of managing and provisioning computer data centers through machine-readable definition files, rather than physical hardware configuration or interactive configuration tools. The IT infrastructure managed ...

to model infrastructure and configuration. Otter provisions and configure servers automatically, without logging in to a command prompt.

Key areas

Otter focuses on two key areas: * Configuration Automation - Otter allows users to model the configuration of servers, roles, and environments; monitor for drift, schedule changes, and ensure consistency across servers * Orchestration Automation - Otter can spin up

cloud server A virtual private server (VPS) is a virtual machine sold as a service by an Internet hosting service. The virtual dedicated server (VDS) also has a similar meaning. A virtual private server runs its own copy of an operating system (OS), and cus ...

s, build containers, deploy packages, patch servers, or any other multi-server/service automation Otter also has drift monitoring capabilities. It can continuously monitor for server configuration drift, can automatically remediate drift, and can send notification when drift occurs.

Key features

Otter has a visual, web-based

user interface In the industrial design field of human–computer interaction, a user interface (UI) is the space where interactions between humans and machines occur. The goal of this interaction is to allow effective operation and control of the machine f ...

that is designed to "create complex configurations and orchestrations using the intuitive, drag-and-drop editor, and then switch to-and-from code/text mode as needed." Otter aims to enable

DevOps DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (''Dev'') and IT operations (''Ops''). It aims to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery with high software quality. DevOps is complementary to ...

practices through its UI, and shows the configuration state of an organization's servers infrastructure (local, virtual, cloud-built). Otter has first-class Windows support and supports

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

-based operating systems through SSH based agents. Otter monitors servers for configuration changes, and reports when the configuration has drifted. Otter supports both agent and agent-less windows servers. Beginning in Version 1.5 Otter integrates with Atlassian Jira and

Git Git () is a distributed version control system: tracking changes in any set of files, usually used for coordinating work among programmers collaboratively developing source code during software development. Its goals include speed, data in ...

. This functionality is enabled through extensions.

PowerShell

A key feature of Otter is the

Windows PowerShell PowerShell is a task automation and configuration management program from Microsoft, consisting of a command-line shell and the associated scripting language. Initially a Windows component only, known as Windows PowerShell, it was made open-so ...

integration. As a tool designed with "first-class" Windows support, this feature allows users to leverage their existing scripts and scripts built by the Windows PowerShell community.

References

{{Reflist Orchestration software Configuration management

Key areas

Key features

PowerShell

See also

References