(eBook) - Automation - PLC Communications in a Process Control System
IT Automation How to Guide eBook
Transcript of IT Automation How to Guide eBook
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IT Automation:
A How - To - Guide
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IT Automation: A How To GuideThats odd, Bill thought to himself as he walked past the distribution department on his way to ITOps and noticed most of the crew just sitting around. Theyre usually going full bore picking and
packing orders at this time of the morning. His ringing cell phone suddenly diverted his attention. It
was Dan Johnson, the site General Manager.
I need you in my office right now! barked Johnson. The phone went dead before Bill had a chance
to respond. He quickly rerouted.
The inventory update didnt run completely last night, Johnson snapped as Bill rushed into the
office. All the product we received in yesterday isnt showing up in the system so orders arent
dropping. We have nothing to pick.
Bill shuffled uneasily in front of the GM and began to respond. Johnson cut him off.
We can see the orders backing up in the system, but we cant do anything with
them because the system says were out of stock. Now Im in a world of hurt.
What happened and what are you going to do to prevent it from happeningagain?
If youve been around IT Ops for any length of time, youve personally
suffered through this type of experience or know someone who has. Its not
pleasant, but unfortunately all too common. Its especially prevalent in an IT
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environment with a sea of IT automation and scheduling services within disconnected applications
running on separate processing islands. Many businesses today face similar struggles running
their workloads by piecing together scheduling tools that underpin many parts of the modern IT
infrastructure.
According to a Forrester survey1, two thirds of IT decision makers use scheduling solutions from
unconnected packaged applications and half employ multiple job schedulers on different platforms.
The problems this arrangement causes include:
Lack of synchronization between jobs that are linked by dependencies
Excessive manual intervention required to run jobs
Critical jobs not completed in time for the business
Files not being transferred in time for crucial jobs to run
Our friend Bill was the victim of such an IT Ops environment. His inventory update ran at midnight,
just as it was set up to do. Unfortunately, crucial sales data that was needed to completely update
the inventory hadnt arrived by then. The result was an incomplete - and inaccurate - update. As aconsequence, a crucial business operation was temporarily shut down.
One solution to such a problem could be to use events instead of clocks and calendars to schedule
jobs. If Bills job had been scheduled to run based on an event the receipt of all files needed for
1The IT Automation Imperative by Jean-Pierre Garbani, VP and Principal Analyst, Forrester Research, June 20, 2013.
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a complete inventory update the job wouldnt have run at midnight. It would have waited until all
files were received and then it would have run. The inventory update would have been complete
and the business would have been able to begin picking and shipping as usual.
However, applications are not necessarily capable of raising notifications at the time your business
needs, so you need a means of monitoring the activity to detect those designated events. Changes
in business conditions or in the IT systems can cause these unpredictable events to occur, making
automated detection even more critical.
Bills system obviously lacked that capability, but you can avoid a similar fate. In the world of ITAutomation, there is a solution. Its called Workload Automation (WLA). WLA manages mixed
workloads in heterogeneous IT environments and provides the type of awareness needed to
provide event-based automated scheduling. But WLA provides much more than that.
With WLA, you get workload management aligned with business policies and intelligent scheduling
focused on optimum resource allocation. Where IT Automation links disparate systems and software
in such a way that they become self-acting or self-regulating. WLA manages the execution of the
workload running on your servers, finding and utilizing processing time that would otherwise sitidle. This maximizes your system processing power, productivity, and performance and provides the
business with accurate information when it needs it.
Isnt it time
you took
the leap into
Workload
Automation?
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As increased business requirements and higher expectations puts added pressure on IT Ops,
more organizations are identifying the value that WLA solutions can bring to managing an IT
workload.
Isnt it time you took the leap into Workload Automation? Consolidating all your scheduling
systems into one enterprise-wide job scheduling solution may sound daunting but it doesnt have
to be. And it will pay off big time in:
Reduced IT capital and operational costs
Efficient use of servers
Accelerated throughput for better response to the business
Enabled business expansion without additional IT costs
Improved customer satisfaction levels
The toughest part is getting started and thats the purpose of this guide. Well take you through
the evolution of job scheduling to where we are today, the path you need to take to get there, and
what benefits WLA can bring to your business.
Lets begin.
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Table of Contents
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IT Automation: A How To Guide
IT Automation: A How To Guide 2
Job Scheduling 101 for Non-Techies 7
Controlling the Chaos: Workload Automation 14
What can Workload Automation Do For You? 18
Sounds Great: How Do I Get There? 21
Summary What Does Success Look Like? 31
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Job Scheduling 101 for Non-Techies
What is Job Scheduling?Job Scheduling (JS) has been around for decades. It can be defined simply as the orderly, reliable
sequencing of batch program execution. Thats accurate, but its like saying a car is a mode of
transportation. Its technically correct, but it doesnt come close to explaining the complexities and
variations involved.
Historically, a schedule has been an IT Ops data center tool, not something that is application-centric. It was driven by the need to run jobs and happened at the operating system level. JS uses
clocks and calendars to determine the timing of various processes critical to the business. For
example, the Finance department establishes when the books will close, which determines when IT
Ops needs to run month-end financial reports. JS takes one small step beyond total manual running
of jobs and tasks.
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The Evolution of Job Scheduling
The best way to understand JS is to review its origins and evolution over time.
In the beginning, there was the mainframe computer and a thing called the batch window. Since all
computing activity was processed on the mainframe, finding the best way to utilize this finite (and
limited) resource was critical. The batch window was a nightly period of time when large numbers
of batched jobs were run offline. This practice was developed to free up computing power during
the day to allow end users to run transactions without system drag caused by high-volume batch
processing.
Early on, IT operators would submit jobs based on an instruction book that would not only tell them
what to do, but also provided them with direction on how to handle certain conditions like when
things went wrong. When one submitted job finished running, the operator would submit another.
This was effective at first, but quickly became problematic as the number of machines, jobs, and
scheduling dependencies increased. Early JS was meant to bring some level of automation to these
tasks.
Early JS was
meant to
bring some
level of
automation to
these tasks.
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At this point, IT operators began looking to operating systems based tools to help automate labor-
intensive manual jobs management. For example, in the UNIX world, that tool was CRONtab. It was
widely used despite significant drawbacks like:
No business calendars
No dependency checking between tasks
No centralized management functions to control or monitor overall workload
No audit trail to verify jobs had run
No automated restart/recovery of scheduled tasks
No recovery from machine failure
No flexibility in scheduling rules
No ability to allow cross platform dependencies
On the mainframe a combination of internal operating system functionality with third party
scheduling tools were a bit more sophisticated in what they provided, but still limited in addressing
the more advanced automation needs that were emerging.
Over time, data centers began to shift from a mainframe-centric world to a distributed systems
environment using multiple servers. Businesses were moving off of singularly powerful legacy
systems onto distributed servers built on Unix, Linux, or even Windows. This required the purchase
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of more servers, which by themselves didnt have the same unit of power as a mainframe, but in the
aggregate would offer equivalent power at a fraction of the cost.
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The Challenges of Job Scheduling
In concept, the demands for distributed job scheduling were similar to those of mainframe- driven,time-based sequencing and dependencies models. However, the move to distributed computing
created difficulties. For example, lack of centralized management control became an issue when
jobs were running on many different servers rather than on a single central computer.
The shift to distributed computing caused pockets of job scheduling requirements to pop up.
High-end distributed scheduling solutions started to become available. However, most of the new
schedulers were developed with an operating system-centric rather than an application- centric
viewpoint. They were based on similar principles to what had defined scheduling needs in thelegacy enterprise computer environment, but the requirements had changed. The reality was the
world was different and these solutions needed to be more aware of applications and distributed
systems.
In the late 90s, the growing use of packaged applications like ERPs changed the landscape and
defined a new set of requirements for scheduling and automation. Among those new requirements
were:
Assessing and prioritizing workload requirements
Distributing and matching workloads to server resources
Scheduling workloads based on events and planned schedules
Applying policy-driven automation of jobs, tasks, processes across a heterogeneous computing
environment
The move to
distributed
computing
created
difficulties.
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Integrating jobs that run on different applications to align with business operations
Providing detailed, real-time status reports
Most of the enterprise applications contained built-in automated scheduling tools. However
the applications were isolated from each other and could not address the new scheduling
and automation requirements. Application vendors addressed this problem by providing basic
management tools application program interfaces (APIs). This allowed IT Ops to launch and
monitor the applications batch jobs. It was an important advance, but was still an inadequate
approach to automating packaged application processing.
Incredibly, many modern organizations still run systems that require a significant amount of manual
intervention. Often, a required business process will span several batch processes with each
requiring a manual process to set up, review output, gather additional data, and start subsequent
processes. Traditional scheduling tools are not capable of automating these processes.
Obviously these steps are time-consuming and prone to errors because each process is manually
completed over and over again. Every time a process is run, theres another opportunity for a
mistake. Leading analysts have determined that 40% of failures within IT Operations are the result
of operator errors.
As weve shown, JS products have helped to automate some of these tasks and processes. But
ultimately, most IT operations end up with a mixed bag of packaged and customer built business
40%of
failures within
IT Operations
are the result
of operator
errors.
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applications each with its own scheduling tool. Such a system is common and not necessarily bad,
but it does present challenges to an IT Ops team.
The end result in this type of JS environment presents a litany of limitations:
No way to manage priorities for entire batch workload that needs automating
Wasted time setting up, running, controlling, and monitoring jobs across multiple systems
Lack of alignment between IT and business activities
Weak communication between systems when something goes wrong
No end-to-end automation
Clearly something more was needed.
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Controlling the Chaos: Workload AutomationAs you can see, the requirements to automate system and business processes have gone muchfurther than what basic JS can provide. Job scheduling tools can automate jobs or processes for
static workloads within their separate applications. The problem is that the IT workload for business
in the real world is neither separate nor static.
Automation solutions for businesses today need to use day, date, and time as components of
their solution. But they also need to include additional features that address
the changing demands of the organization and to better respond to the
business. A more advanced solution is needed to provide a business
policy-driven model in a mixed workload environment. This is
especially necessary for mission critical processes that
need to meet stringent availability and performance
standards.
That advanced solution is Workload Automation
(WLA).
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What is Workload Automation?
Workload automation is a software solution driven by business policies that provides cross-platform, cross application, end-to-end automation with minimal manual intervention. WLA
effectively optimizes the utilization of system resources by orchestrating workload and providing
an enterprise-wide view of IT operations. WLA is a solution capable of predicting when and where
system resources will be needed, and then based on business priorities, allocating appropriate
resources to meet those demands.
WLA reaches into applications and coordinates activities externally using clocks, calendars,
events and any other changes requiring action. By connecting and integrating applications, WLAmanages the jobs that need to run in each thus orchestrating the complex process flows running
on disparate operating system platforms.
WLA goes beyond basic JS by providing:
Integration of application processes
Unified interface to manage and monitor batch jobs
Orchestration of strategic IT workload
Cross-platform operating capability
Ability to manage complex dependencies
End-user self service
WLA is a
solution
capable of
predicting
when and
where system
resources will
be needed.
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Centralized management and visibility of all IT workload
Scalability with elasticity to meet changing workload demands Auditability and security
Why Workload Automation?Managing workloads with WLA expands resource availability, improves system performance,
and significantly lowers cost. Implementing a WLA solution results in the type of increased
responsiveness required by organizations in todays ultra-competitive environment. Business
requirements drive IT Ops to provide the organization with timely, accurate information in an ever-
changing environment. It frees up IT operators to innovate and refine rather than using up all their
brainpower in double-checking and fixing so-called automated processes, and it gives them an
overview of the entire system thats easy to audit and manage, making it easy to recover swiftly and
painlessly from any problems or glitches.
Workload automation easy scales and is elastic enough to meet changing workload demands;
since all applications and platforms are automated according to the same rules, its easy to add or
subtract applications as necessary for the growing needs of a company without needing to reworkthe entire system. Workload automation expands the available resources while improving the overall
systems performance. It controls the execution of every IT job, minimizes failures and improves
accuracy. WLA also makes it possible for reports to be generated, delivered, and made available to
the company at large more quickly, improving service delivery overall.
All of these
new features
mean that
manual
intervention
is rarely
necessary.
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If an inventory update requires sales data from multiple jobs and one of them is lagging, WLA is
sophisticated enough to recognize that the inventory update has to wait to run until all of the data
is received, overriding its usual scheduled time. WLA also includes established automated failure
routines and recovery processes: for example, if a marketing report is dependent on another
job that fails to run, the WLA is able to re-start the job, postpone it, or get the data another way
if necessary. All of these new features mean that manual intervention is rarely necessary. WLA
corrects itself when problems arise, and is smart enough to rank its workload and re-allocate
resources according to the companys priorities.
When a problem occurs that is too difficult for the WLA system to figure out on its own, its fareasier for IT operators to intervene, locate the problem, and correct it quickly. IT operators no
longer have to check each individual application looking for what went wrong; theyre now able to
see the entire IT workload in a centralized management system, pinpoint the problem, document
it, and execute a standardized response (either automatic or manual). WLA even includes built-in
notifications to let IT staff know when issues arise, a feature thats particularly critical when the
companys operations depend on a batch job running according to schedule.
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What can Workload Automation Do For You?
The many uses of a WLA solution include:
Meet growing IT Ops demands
IT Ops has become an integral force in helping to drive business success. To that point, more is
being asked of IT to help organizations stay in the forefront of emerging business trends. Some of
those demands could include:
Implementation of a major application like an ERP
Expanded use of IT services to support new business units or product lines
Increased workload processing due to a merger or acquisition
Automating the capture and analytic reporting of Big Data applications
Replacing legacy scheduling tools because of excess costs
Upgrading scheduling tools that are incompatible with new systems
Consolidating and simplifying the management of multiple servers within data centers
Freeing up staff to focus on innovation
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Improve service delivery
WLA has gone far beyond the original mission of making IT
Operations more efficient and productive. Now the driving force
behind the move to WLA is the need to improve service delivery.
WLA enables IT Ops to do that by:
Controlling all job executions
Minimizing failures and limiting the impact of other issues
Improving the availability and accuracy of information
Accelerating the generation and delivery of reports Delivering a consistent service to the business
Bridge islands of automation
A key goal of WLA is to create bridges between the islands of automation that emerged through
the proliferation of applications. WLA provides interconnection and allows for the entire business
and IT process to be built as one contiguous activity. WLA accomplishes this by:
Creating dependencies between jobs
Dealing with external events like the arrival of files
Communicating with multiple applications
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Controlling the sequencing of jobs between applications and controlling the order in which
they run. For example, in Bills opening scenario, WLA would have held the inventory update
from running until all the necessary sales data had been received.
Establishing automated failure routines and recovery processes
Increase IT Ops productivity and efficiencyThere are many ways that WLA makes it easier for IT Ops to do its job, including:
Seamlessly integrating processing tasks which would otherwise be handled manually
Standardizing job execution processes Providing immediate visibility of the impact of failure to dependent processing
Controlling different types of jobs on all servers from one central point of control
Building notifications into existing jobs to alert staff to issues
Enabling faster problem diagnosis and resolution through one click access to logs, built- in
documentation, standardized responses (both automatic and manual) from a central console
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Sounds Great: How Do I Get There?Making the decision to move to WLA is your first big step. Sound planning and careful executionbecome your next moves since that is the key to a successful implementation. Here are the steps to
follow to ensure a smooth transition:
Evaluate your current situationBefore you can move to where you want to be, you need
to determine where you are. You should assess the people,
processes, and business issues in your organization and analyze
the impact the solution will have on your organization.
Personnel Assessment
Can you obtain senior management buy-in and executive
level sponsorship?
Have you identified key stakeholders who have a vested
interest in the affected processes?
Have you involved the right people from all business units
affected by the initiative?
Have you performed adequate due diligence to ensure
alignment of the IT project goals and objectives with the needs of the people utilizing the
technology?
?
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Have you communicated sufficiently with the organization to gain commitment?
Can you generate a positive response from the organization to ensure the solution will be usedonce delivered?
Does the IT project team have the needed skills and training to deliver the expected results?
Process Review
How many problems are recurring in your current environment, how frequently do they occur,
and how will they be impacted by the WLA initiative?
How do all of the scheduled processes work together in the current system? Whats the cost of what youre currently doing today in terms of hardware, software, and
personnel expenses?
What issues from the current working environment are you looking to resolve?
How do the business work processes rely on each of the parts of the current system?
Is IT fixing the problem with just technology or improving the underlying business processes?
Business Issues
Can automation be used to further integrate existing technology assets in addressing business
needs?
What new initiatives are planned and how will they affect the implementation?
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Does the technology solution match the needs of the solution desired?
Has a cost/value analysis been completed? Will the proposed solution enhance or add burden to the end users?
How will ongoing support, enhancements and upkeep affect the anticipated ROI?
Will WLA achieve the required business process improvements?
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Get everyone involvedThe next major goal when converting to WLA is to help people understand and relate to the
changes the process will bring.
Senior management needs to see how the new system will benefit the company and generate
better profit margins.
Managers need to know how the new system will affect their budgets and resources.
Workers need to understand how the new processes will change their jobs and what theyll be
gaining.
Everyone needs to feel like theyre a part of whatshappening not just hapless victims of a new
system.
Most importantly, everyone needs to understand
how the company will better serve your
customers as a result of the change.
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Address challengesCombining established conversion utilities with proven upgrade methodologies make switching
from legacy tools to WLA relatively risk-free. Leveraging existing job definitions, process flows, and
work plans when upgrading will make your transition easier.
However, every new business endeavor holds inherent challenges, and converting to a WLA system
is no exception. Gather input from all the stakeholders to identify the challenges your transition
poses to the business, to the current technologies, and to the political environment of the company.
Next develop ways that each of these challenges can be overcome. Are more people needed to effectively implement the conversion process?
Do employees need more education and training?
Identify a clear, workable solution for each challenge to the project. All pitfalls cant be completely
eliminated, but all can be addressed ahead of time to greatly reduce the chance one of them will
derail your project.
Leveraging
existing job
definitions,
process flows,
and work
plans when
upgrading will
make your
transitioneasier.
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Find the right solutionEvery business is different and many have unique demands and requirements. EMA Researchs
survey of IT operators identified these criteria as ones you should consider when selecting the best
solution for you.
Cost/value
Ease of deployment
Ease of use
Scalability
Audit friendly
Role-based access control
Questions to ask at this stage include:
Which solution meets all the stakeholder needs established in your
assessment?
Does the solution take into consideration all your physical and virtual resources?
Which solution will be simple to install and easy to update?
What user interface best meets the needs of both the IT staff and the end users?
Does the solution meet all the business priorities?
Does the solution provide IT Ops control and flexibility while still being simple enough for the
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non-technical staff working with it each day?
Is there an industry track record of success with the proposed technology solution?
The most successful WLA implementations use a single solution from one provider. Organizations
run into all sorts of troubles when they use a patchwork of different systems from multiple vendors.
When it comes to automation, these systems are rarely compatible and often cause problems and
errors. With one provider, you avoid the endless multi-vendor finger pointing game when a problem
arises.
The most
successful WLA
implementations
use a single
solution from
one provider.
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Choose your partner wiselyEqually important to finding the right solution is choosing the right partner. When picking a
provider, make sure youre getting a complete solution that includes training, services, and ongoing
continuous support rather than just a product.
Moving to WLA is an important step and not one that will be made often. When you select a vendor,
you are choosing a provider that will influence your business for a long period of time. Here are
some things to consider when deciding on your vendor/partner:
Make sure you are dealing with a company that will focus on you specifically a partner who
will develop plans that fit your needs and challenges.
Choose a vendor that is willing to form a partnership and invest in your success.
Select a partner who will be there to support your team when the inevitable issues arise.
This will be your most crucial decision. Dont make it lightly.
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Consider using a phased-in approachOnce youve decided on a solution and provider, the next step
is implementation. Many organizations have been successful by
phasing in their WLA project. Using the 80/20 rule, identify the few
time-consuming and error prone jobs that are causing most of your
problems and put those at the top of your implementation list.
Addressing and solving those issues first will help the initiative gain
momentum by demonstrating early success. Gradual implementation
also allows you to identify and address issues that come up along theway. Finally, such an approach allows the company to slowly absorb
project costs over time without having to make a huge investment all
at once.
Training and Professional ServicesIf youve chosen the right solution, the tools you get should be easy to use for most standard
requirements. The purpose of training, then, is to empower your people so they can apply the
solution effectively after implementation. Knowledge transfer is key.
The goal is to be self-sufficient and to enable you to be more responsive to the business when they
want to adapt the solution for different requirements.
Knowledge
transfer is key.
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In addition to participating in comprehensive training, you want to see what other help is offered.
Can you get help setting up the environment properly, creating examples of each of the job
types and processes you need to run?
Will the vendor go the extra mile and help you build and deploy the entire system?
Can you do this with in-house resources or do you need to contract with another
consultant?
The goal is to ensure that you actually realize the benefits and values you set out to achieve at the
start.
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Summary What Does Success Look Like?So how does all this translate into value for your organization? How does this provide a positiveimpact to the business as a whole? What does a successful WLA implementation look like?
Many businesses have already made the jump to WLA and as a result have been able to:
Reduce capital expenditures by up to 50%
Reduce operational costs by nearly 30%
Cut 33% of network communication by reducing their scheduler footprint
Provide 100% coverage of server workload at minimal costs
Reduce nightly batch window by 30% through event-driven scheduling
Accelerate throughput creating extra time to get more work
done
Ensure on-time delivery of up-to-date reports to management
every day
Reduce support calls by 90%, dramatically increasing
staff productivity
Gain end-to-end visibility and control of IT processes
Comply with IT audits and avoid costly penalty payments
Allow business expansion without adding IT resources and
associated costs
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The pressure is on IT Ops to reduce costs and maximize current IT assets without impacting
service. At the same time, many organizations are approaching a crossroads at which they need to
make decisions regarding future scheduling and automation strategy.
As an IT Ops leader you understand that your organization is an integral part of your company and
must ensure service delivery and responsiveness. You must be prepared to embrace innovation,
strive for excellence and continuous improvement, and provide businesses with accurate, timely
information to remain competitive. This business focus will require IT investments in automation
that will enable growth drivers and support customer needs.
Analysts agree that the move to WLA is inevitable. WLA is still peaking but its ranked as having
high importance by most IT executives and is projected to be within a few years of mainstream
adoption.
Making investments in these solutions will dramatically impact the success of your organization.
The long-term benefits of WLA are lower costs, higher productivity, and better quality of service.
The advantages of automation greatly outweigh the costs and risks associated with hanging onto
outdated and less efficient schedulers.
For this reason, companies willing to invest in their long-term gains see higher profit margins,
greater employee productivity, and better customer service ratings than those who hang on to
antiquated systems too long because the process seems overwhelming.
Isnt it time you made the jump?
Making
investments in
these solutions
will dramatically
impact the
success of yourorganization.
-
8/10/2019 IT Automation How to Guide eBook
33/33
Automic is the worlds most comprehensive platform for automating businesses. Founded in 1985, Automic
pioneered the largest, independent, globally deployed automation platform which powers enterprise, application and
infrastructure processes. Now, as the consumerization of IT accelerates, Automic is reimagining how organizations
integrate next generation service models such as Cloud, DevOps and Big Data. By challenging conventional thinking,
Automic enables its customers to be faster, smarter, and in control. Automic the standard in business automation.
www.automic.com
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