The Four Pillars of Atlas
Atlas is not a single product — it's the integrated operational layer that makes R Co's entire showcase environment coherent, repeatable, and observable.
Pillar 1 — Secrets
HashiCorp Vault
Centralized secrets and credentials management. Dynamic secrets, PKI, database credentials, and encryption-as-a-service. Every application in R Co fetches credentials at runtime — no static secrets in code or config.
Pillar 2 — Infrastructure
Terraform
Infrastructure-as-code for every R Co resource. Azure networking, DNS, Static Web Apps, virtual machines, and cloud services are all defined and version-controlled. Drift detection and plan/apply workflows keep the environment consistent.
Pillar 3 — Configuration
Ansible
Configuration management and workload automation. Ansible playbooks handle OS hardening, application deployment, IBM product configuration, and ongoing drift remediation across bare-metal and VM workloads.
Pillar 4 — Observability
IBM Instana
Full-stack observability across R Co's entire workload. Automatic discovery, distributed tracing, real-time metrics, and AI-powered anomaly detection. Every service R Co runs is instrumented and visible in a single Instana dashboard.
How Atlas Supports the R Co Ecosystem
Every other program in R Co — Q-Forge, Hawkeye, NorthStar, Watson Experience, Vaulted ID — sits on top of Atlas. It provides the cross-cutting concerns that each showcase layer depends on.
Q-Forge
Vault provides the PKI and secrets infrastructure that GCM scans and inventories. Terraform provisions the GCM VM. Instana monitors GCM health and latency.
Hawkeye
Ansible deploys the Guardium Central Manager and collectors. Vault provides the credentials used by audit workflows. Instana monitors the Guardium pipeline end to end.
NorthStar
Terraform provisions the watsonx.governance and Guardium AI Security environments. Vault provides API keys and service credentials used by the AI governance integration layer.
Vaulted ID
Vault is the direct subject of Vaulted ID — Atlas's Vault deployment IS the demo environment. IBM Verify governs the identity layer on top. Instana provides end-to-end visibility of identity and secrets flows.
Watson
Terraform provisions cloud resources for watsonx deployments. Vault injects API keys and cloud credentials at runtime. Instana monitors watsonx pipeline response times and errors.
Key Capabilities
- Zero static secrets — all credentials are dynamic, short-lived, and rotated automatically via Vault
- Declarative infrastructure — every R Co resource is defined in Terraform and stored in version control
- Idempotent configuration — Ansible playbooks ensure consistent, repeatable state across all workloads
- Full-stack telemetry — Instana auto-discovers and instruments every service, from hypervisor to application layer
- GitOps workflow — GitHub Actions triggers Terraform plans and Ansible runs on every change to the infrastructure repo
- Hybrid-cloud ready — Atlas runs on the AEC VMware vSphere / Fusion HCI cluster with Azure integration for web and DNS
Expected Outcomes
Zero long-lived secrets across the entire R Co environment
Fully declarative, version-controlled infrastructure
Sub-5-minute environment rebuild from Terraform + Ansible
Single-pane observability from hypervisor to application
GitOps-driven deployment pipeline with no manual steps