Media Coverages
February 8, 2008 - Vol.30 Issue 6
IT's Auto Pilot
Benefit From The Automation Of Routine IT Tasks
by Robyn Weisman
As networks become more complicated and IT staff overworked, chances for human error for even the most basic IT tasks shoot up. Therefore, automating routine IT tasks can minimize headaches, both for networks and those running them. Moreover, IT automation can improve resource allocation and save cold, hard cash-something all companies, large and small, can always use more of.
As SMEs start to incorporate virtualization into their networks, IT automation strategies grow increasingly important. Mihir Shukla, CEO of automation solutions provider Tethys Solutions (www.tethyssolutions.com), points out that when a single physical server holds three virtual servers, perhaps with each having a different operating system, it becomes harder to test and validate. "People create various automation and validation routines, and they put them in different virtual machines and make sure all of them are configured properly," Shukla says.
Automating Events
Task automation has evolved in the last couple of years, Shukla says. Until fairly recently, most automated tasks were calendar-based, in which you might set up a script to back up your data every Saturday night.
Now event-based automation is becoming more prevalent as the data center becomes more inundated by alerts. "We might see 100 alerts in a given day of various types, and many of these alerts can be responded to by an automation routine," says Shukla.
For example, a log file larger than 200MB can slow server performance, so you could set up an event that will automatically scrub or rotate the log file once it goes over the size, says Shukla.
For his part, Kris Domich, principal consultant for data center and storage solutions at Dimension Data (www.dimensiondata.com), says that backup operations within data centers ought to be automated as much as possible. "Leaving this [type of] responsibility with a person, who may or may not remember or may not be available when backups need to begin, is just too risky," says Domich.
Domich also recommends that backup reporting should also be automated. "However, these reports [should] be reviewed manually on a daily basis to ensure all backup jobs are completed successfully and no error conditions are present," he says.
Tasks To Automate
According to Shukla, many tasks can be automated, particularly processes that run between servers. "Job scheduling is definitely one. People want to archive files, date backups, restart services every few days, reboot file servers, create users, rotate log files or scrub the log files as the size of the log files increase, monitor servers and databases, [and] monitor email servers to make sure they are working fine," he says.
Dimension Data's Domich advocates that SMEs should also automate environmental monitoring, which includes monitoring the power consumption and temperature of the data center, from the UPS to the rack and component levels.
"Understanding the state of your equipment aids in the overall capacity management of the data center," Domich says. "This visibility is essential to planning data center expansion and mitigating the risks associated with adding more equipment than can be adequately cooled."
Benefits Of Automation
Shukla says that the benefits of automating routine IT tasks start at basic cost savings. "Various job processing tasks or monitoring servers see about 15 or so alerts in a typical data center of this type. If you take 20 to 25 minutes to dissolve one of these alerts, you are talking about $100,000 a year, simple mathematics," he says.
According to Shukla, automated troubleshooting has trended in the last couple of years.
"If I look at data centers two or three years ago, regardless of level of automation, the problem solvers were still the people. Now we see that data centers are beginning to take a step forward, [saying that these types of] problems have a standard solution and can be solved with an automated routine," he says.
Perhaps the greatest advantage Shukla sees in automation is the strategic ability to realign human resources. "Every organization has 'x' number of expert employees. Those experts are no longer solving problems that can be done by automation, and they are available to redeploy in other areas," Shukla says. "We have seen in the real world people who were bogged down by alerts, putting automation things in place, and three months down the line you go there and you hear, 'You know the project we have wanted to get to for the last two years? We got to it because we don't have to do [those routine tasks] anymore!'"
Shukla says this allows your organization to become more proactive rather than reactive. "The speed at which organizations can move changes, and I tell people, if I just get this benefit for my organization, I would go for automation. Moving faster is worth a lot of money," he says.
IT Automation Products
| Manufacturer | Product Name | URL | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| GridApp Systems | Clarity 4.0 | www.gridapp.com | Provides out-of-the-box automation for database provisioning, patching, configuration management, server validation, and compliance enforcement |