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Automating IT procedures such as repetitive maintenance, patch management, stopping and restarting services, checking network connectivity, and routine application and OS deployment should be a key objective of IT directors working to decrease the cost and complexity of IT operations. As IT departments work to transition from "firefighting mode" to becoming more proactive and responsive, a key step along the path is to implement labor-saving automation tools that allow more tasks to be done more rapidly, using fewer resources and with greater predictability and reliability.
The term "run book automation," traditionally at home in the data center domain, is finding a place in the lexicon of the distributed computing environment as IT directors and managers seek ways to eliminate redundant tasks, capture expert knowledge of key employees, reduce incident resolution time, adhere more closely to regulations and boost infrastructure efficiency. In this whitepaper, LANDesk introduces how its LANDesk? Process Manager technology represents a way for customers of LANDesk systems and security management solutions to define and execute repeatable and measurable processes on an opportunistic, as-needed basis in order to keep systems up to date, lower operational costs, reduce risk and improve service delivery.
Introduction
Run books have existed for years in the data center. Sometimes resembling the thickness of telephone books, run books typically contain resource information about the data center's hardware and software, as well as process information, including step-by-step procedures for operational and emergency processes. They can also contain procedures for starting, stopping and monitoring the system or network; for handling special requests such as the mounting of a storage device containing archived material; and for managing other problems that may arise. While attempts to automate data center run books have met with resistance, "pure play" run book automation solutions providers are making inroads in this market space.
In today's distributed enterprise IT environment, operations managers that perform OS deployments, software license monitoring, endpoint security, and so on employ their own run books or "pseudo run books." These could be a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, perhaps "sticky notes" that detail steps to perform patch management, or even procedures locked in the minds of key IT staff.
According to Gartner Inc. research analyst David Williams, the ability to chain IT management tasks into an automated workflow to support IT management processes "has been an objective of IT operations executives ever since distributed computing emerged as a viable alternative to the mainframe." He continues, "At the mainframe's heart was a batch system providing IT operational task workflow driven by scripts and job control language (JCL) in support of both the IT business and IT management processes. It was safe, controlled and carefully monitored with full reporting. The fragmented complexity of the distributed computing environment did not provide the same capability."
Automating the Desktop Environment through Workflows
Today, the concept of run book automation ("RBA") is emerging as a way to automate, through workflows, operational tasks across different IT disciplines in support of IT process management. In his June 2, 2006 research report "IT Operations Run Book Automation: Automated Operations Revisited", Gartner's Williams says "RBA is attracting considerable attention as the need to design, build, orchestrate, administer and report on workflows that support IT operations process has become a critical need that cannot be met by existing IT management approaches, such as traditional job scheduling products and custom scripting." Williams says RBA products/solutions possess the following three primary components: orchestration, intelligent process workflow and product integration:
Run Book Orchestration is the visualization component providing the mechanisms to design, build, monitor and report on the IT operations process workflows. It also encompasses the administration functions for managing policy, workflow rules, access and so on.
Intelligent Process Workflow implies that the workflow has the necessary rules to check the state at each workflow step, fork to another workflow branch if a specific condition is met, roll back to a steady state on a failure, or create a trouble ticket if an issue is detected.
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