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Slide 1: Run-book Automation with PlateSpin® Orchestrate Adam Spiers Senior Software Consultant Novell adam.spiers@novell.com
Slide 2: The Run-book Documentation of approved diagnostic and recovery procedures Hard to write Difficult to update Very hard to read 2 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 3: Run-book Automation Support the IT operations through automation: Monitoring Ticket enrichment Problem diagnosis Change and repair Optimization and virtualization management Disaster recovery 3 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 4: IDC Worldwide System Infrastructure Software 2009 Top 10 Predictions: 3. Datacenter operations cost concerns will drive IT organizations to adopt automated management software solutions – To overcome headcount constraints while continuing to deliver required service levels, IDC advises IT decision makers to look for run-book automation, process automation, and orchestration tools that can be implemented incrementally (...) These tools need to be able to support physical and virtual machines, network devices, middleware, applications, and databases. December 2008, IDC #215390, Volume: 1 Operating Environments: Top 10 Predictions – 4 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 5: IDC Worldwide System Infrastructure Software 2009 Top 10 Predictions: 6. Standalone virtual server management tools will be gobbled up by automated systems change, configuration, and operations automation platforms – Although once viewed as a standalone product category, in 2009, virtual server management tools will be increasingly integrated into more comprehensive systems provisioning, change, and configuration management solutions. (...) For IT decision makers, 2009 is the year to move virtual server management back into the core datacenter operations environment. With the majority of IT organizations anticipating significant use of virtual servers in production environments in 2009 and beyond, IT teams will be able to operate more efficiently if virtual server and physical server operations become more tightly connected in terms of both process work-flows and management tools. December 2008, IDC #215390, Volume: 1 Operating Environments: Top 10 Predictions – 5 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 6: Run-Book Automation Integration Audit DB Dashboard Server Mgmt. Storage Mgmt. Admin Enterprise Console Ticket System 6 Run-book Automation Network Mgmt. CMDB © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 7: Product Requirements A data center run-book automation tool must be: • • • • • Multi-Platform (Unix, Linux, Windows server) Able to cover more than servers (storage, networks) Scalable and easy to integrate Extensible by IT admin staff Flexible to integrate in existing environments (Enterprise console, ticket system, CMDB) Able to manage physical and virtual machines Secure, with audit capability • • 7 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 8: PlateSpin® Orchestrate • • • • • • Multi-platform, distributed automation tool Front end integration by Java API Automation with Python scripting User authentication and audit database Policies for authorization Manages servers, VMs, and other components 8 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 9: Why Position PlateSpin® Orchestrate for Run-book Automation? • PlateSpin Orchestrate can do a lot more than RBA – Optimization, VM management, green IT, … • RBA requires much less integration effort – A workload optimization project has a big development effort attached RBA can be started iteratively – • • RBA has a short ROI cycle RBA implementation can grow organically into workload optimization and more complex implementations 9 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 10: Examples
Slide 11: Example: SAP BIA Fail-over (Project is in solution development together with HP) • Client has two SAP Business Intelligence Accelerator installations in two cities for DR The failover “run-book” has 40 pages of step-by-step instructions! – • Steps have dependencies on both sides, some steps must be run on one server, some on up to 16 servers per side • Proof of concept of two days in HP lab automated the more complex steps on the infrastructure side (storage system failover and SAP cleanup/restart) 11 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 12: Example: Setting Passwords (This one originally convinced a customer to buy PlateSpin® Orchestrate) • When an admin leaves the company, the admin passwords needs to be changed on all systems – – Unix, Linux, Windows Even on machines that may be powered down right now (for a long time) • PlateSpin Orchestrate has the feature to run jobs on resources rejoining the grid – Can change password as soon as machine powers up 12 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 13: Example: Ticket Enrichment Speed up information gathering in incident handling • For a new incident ticket on a specific business service: – – – Find all systems relevant for that service Run a support script on all these systems Attach the information to the ticket automatically Check if databases are still in backup mode Check if VLANS are configured on switch ports • The “intelligence” of the script can grow over time – – • This service will benefit from integration with a Configuration Management Database, e.g. Novell® CMDB360 and Novell myCMDB ™ ™ 13 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 14: Example: Check System Health • Check for full file systems and try to fix immediately – Platform-dependent locations Application-dependent scripts Flexible cleanup scripts – – • Check for application and system processes – Application-dependent checks Check for hanging backup processes etc. – 14 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 15: Example: Check Databases • Check processes and connectivity – Check system tables Check application databases running (easily configured) – • Provide automatic restart and recovery assistance Check archive log and backup modes • 15 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 16: Example: Public Key Management • Support handling of SSL/TLS keys on servers – – – – – Check certificate validity Generate new Certificate Signing Requests Collect CSR (Signing certificates is security sensitive) Distribute certificates to servers • Same with SSH keys – Update known_hosts and authorized_keys lists 16 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 17: Example: What Is There Today ? The tutorial already has some good example jobs that are building blocks for RBA, e.g. • doit – Execute a command on a host or a group of hosts • Baseline – Compare a configuration file against a baseline file Distribute the “master” file on a group of hosts – 17 © Novell, Inc. All rights reserved.
Slide 18: Questions and Answers
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