Run Book Automation: Why all Roads Lead to It

Transcript Run Book Automation: Why all Roads Lead to It

Mark Jones Senior Product Manager

Run Book Automation: Why All Roads Lead to It

Our Vision For IT Process Automation

3 Years In The Making

3 years ago NetIQ had a vision for converging our systems & security management products to support consolidated incident & event handling.

But customers said, help us connect to our other tools as well.

We’re the Noah’s Ark of tools – we have two of everything.

VP of Operations at a major Financial Institution

So we altered our plan to give customers greater control of the tools they’ve already invested in by creating a strategy for heterogeneous IT Process Automation (ITPA).

The Market Need

IT Operations At The “Cost-Roads” People are the highest cost of IT operations, driving a desire for management tools or technology to better leverage scarce resources Outside of outsourcing, process is the final frontier to control costs… But implementing process has proven difficult for many IT Operations teams 4 But, tools are typically deployed in silos, are under utilized and require customization & training, creating additional costs

IT Operations Needs Process

Process Needs Control & Automation • • Process Controls Produce: – – – – Consistent IT service delivery Knowledge capture and sharing A transparent audit trail Quality metrics to support continuous improvement Process Automation Bolsters Efficiency By: – – – Offloading mundane or repetitive steps Auto-routing data and events to the right operators Shifting the process bias from “doing” to “approving” through tool integration – Reducing the personnel training requirements

An Example of Inefficient Process

0: Poor service quality detected 1: Admin Notified Service Desk 2: Ticket Created 3: Service Desk Receives Ticket 4: Establish bridge line 5: Notify other groups 6: Commence finger-pointing 7: Isolate potential cause 8: Notify change management 9: No requested change?

10: Guilty admin rolls back 11: Validate remediation 12: Close ticket 13: Review with management Network Management Security Management Database Management IT Management Application Management IT Functions Best of Breed Management Tools Managed Technologies

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Common Attempts to Automate IT Processes

“Fly by the seat of your developers pants” – – – Utilizes job scheduling tools or custom scripts High cost and high risk with the developer Fragile as processes and infrastructure changes “The CMDB silver bullet” – Connect the CMDB to all other tools for centralized info – – Doesn’t address process – only contains configuration data Overly complex to populate and maintain CI data & relationships “The top-down framework push” – – – The hope of using a single vendor to somehow deliver process Tools designed for specific ITIL functions Little process awareness – customer must provide

…ALL fail to deliver true IT Operations “process automation”

A Better Approach: Run Book Automation

Run Book Automation Defined:

"IT operations RBA products automate, through workflows, IT operational tasks across different IT management disciplines in support of the IT management processes." David Williams Gartner © 2007 NetIQ Corporation. All rights reserved.

The Evolution of IT Operations

A need to integrate diverse tools is driving innovators to look at RBA or IT Process Automation

RBA Architecture – According to Gartner

This is why all roads lead to RBA

Research Into the Benefits of RBA

Introducing NetIQ Aegis

Introducing NetIQ

Aegis™

The Control & Automation Platform for IT Processes

Improve Measure ITIL Process (macro) Run Books (micro) Model Automate

NetIQ Aegis is a software platform that models, automates, measures and improves run books and ITIL-based processes, bringing control and automation to IT Operations

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NetIQ Aegis: An IT Process Automation Platform

Delivers immediate benefits – Integrates and leverages existing management tools such as AppManager – Automates routine tasks, reducing admin workload – Embedded correlation engine intelligently launches workflows while reducing noise – Improves responsiveness and consistency for event handling • Paves the way for long-term success – Provides a path to build process maturity from the bottom-up – Provides specific process metrics for continuous improvement

Process Variations

IT Management

Processes:

• Macro-level • Span disciplines • Coordinate across silos • Managed by Process Owner • E.g. ITIL Processes Service Desk Network Management Security Management Database Management Application Management IT Functions

Run Books:

• Micro-level • Tool-specific • Managed by IT experts • Single-silo • E.g. disk space cleanup Best of Breed Management Tools Managed Technologies

Note:

Gray items are post-V1

Aegis Architecture Overview

Presentation Layer

Consoles tailored to specific users

Config Console Operations Console Reporting

Process Templates

Provides built-in knowledge

Activity Libraries

Building blocks to control tools

Independent Engines

Scalable data processing

Reconciliation Layer

Normalizes data from diverse tools

Run Books (micro)

(Event Correlation, Fault Recovery, Routine Server Restarts, etc.)

Correlation Engine Processes (macro)

(ITIL Incident Management, Change Management, DR Testing, etc)

Workflow Automation Engine IQRM Service Model IQConnect Data Bus & IQCIM Object Model Adapters

Bi-directional data collection & control

NetIQ Products 3 rd Party Best-of-breed products

NetIQ Aegis

Configuration Console Enterprise Ready: Integrated with Active Directory for security; Reconciles resource models from external management products Create Processes: blank canvas From NetIQ-supplied wizard-driven templates, by importing a process shared by others, or start from a

NetIQ Aegis

Workflow Designer Activity Libraries: to share knowledge Provide “building blocks” that accelerate process design and can be customized, exported and imported Model Workflow: right click editing Simply by dragging and dropping activities onto the workflow designer, with

NetIQ Aegis

Process Manager Manage Process Lifecycle: Place processes in production, clone processes to make revisions or roll back to previous versions

NetIQ Aegis

Operator Console – Related Events User-friendly Web UI: and sorting Built with Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX to allow quick filtering Collaborate: Add comments to any work item for follow-up or to document steps Correlation Engine: Gather events from multiple tool sources and correlate them to eliminate sympathetic process triggers

NetIQ Aegis

Operator Console – Real-time Workflow Status Workflow Progress: Green checks show completed progress; red box highlights waiting for human input; green lines show path taken Dynamic Display: Status updates automatically as workflow progresses

NetIQ Aegis

Report Console Publish Reports: Reporting Services Automatically generate and distribute reports using Microsoft SQL Server Report Library: Out-of-the-box report templates that can be customized to identify process improvement candidates

Key Benefits of Aegis to IT Operations

• • • • Aegis leverages existing software investments to increase their ROI and deploy rapidly – No rip & replace…get more out of your existing infrastructure Aegis improves IT service levels & reduces costs – Faster time to resolution, outage prevention, provisioning, etc.

Aegis facilitates operational discipline and improves IT responsiveness – Greater control (compliance) & consistent service delivery Aegis enhances IT Operations maturity over time – Reports provide performance metrics to identify bottlenecks and drive continuous improvement

Key Benefits to an AppManager User

• • • • Aegis extends the capabilities of AppManager – – Self-management such as start/stop jobs autonomically Get more out of your AppManager investment Aegis correlates events from AppManager – – Reduce the number of events you must address Focus on those that need the attention Aegis connects AppManager with other tools – – As part of a logical workflow Use AppManager to support enterprise objectives Aegis automates routine activities – But provides the ability to maintain manual control at specified points in the workflow