If you receive errors when attempting to view this white paper, please install the latest version of
Adobe Reader.
"Today’s heterogeneous enterprise
data center environments are quickly growing in
size and complexity, driven by mergers and acquisitions, expansion into multiple data centers, and large-scale
initiatives such as server and storage consolidation."
Source : Tidal Software
Automate to Optimize : The Foundation for Data Center Efficiency
Data Center Efficiency is also known as :
data center efficiency,
automate data center,
optimize data center efficiency,
optmize data center power,
optimizing data center performance,
automate optimize foundation,
optimal power data center,
optimal power,
optimize density data center,
data center applications operating ,
optimal power distribution,
opportunity efficiency data center,
optimize power,
optimizing data center resources,
data center energy management,
automate data center,
data center optimization.f
Introduction & Purpose
Data centers experience constant change
under pressure from technology and business
drivers.
IT systems are becoming more, not less complex
as new technologies are introduced, and IT staffs
are not growing to keep pace with the growth in
size and complexity of the typical data center.
Windows™ administrators need to radically
simplify both complex and routine tasks if they
are going to effectively respond to the constant
pressure to deliver increasing value with limited
resources. The most effective thing Windows
administrators can do to address this issue is to
minimize duties associated with maintaining the
existing infrastructure.
There are several ways Windows administrators
can create greater efficiencies in their daily tasks.
This paper describes an automation solution
that can significantly simplify many complex and
routine tasks, freeing Windows experts to focus
on overall application functionality and value to
the business. This solution is actually in use today
within Microsoft's own data center.
One Data center Operation that
Can Be Radically Simplified
Data center operations are complex largely
because of application and infrastructure
diversity, and the many locations for storing and
using scripts and automation process-knowledge
in those environments. Choosing the tasks and
functions to simplify through automation must
be done carefully and with the right tools. For
example, one area of data center operations
that can yield large eficiency gains through
automation is batch processing.
Almost every IT group uses some form of batch
processing. Batch processes are comprised of
many tasks and touch a variety of systems as they
execute. Most IT groups use multiple schedulers
to drive batch processing in their environment,
which inherently creates ineficiencies but is
better than no solution at all. Therefore batch
processing presents Windows experts a great
opportunity for eficiency through simpliication.
Today, to automate batch processing IT
groups use everything from simple scripts and
rudimentary scheduling products included in
particular point solutions up to more powerful job
schedulers. The challenge for many organizations,
and therefore the opportunity for eficiency gains,
arises out of the fact that each batch processing
solution requires its own expertise and each
system ends up getting integrated separately and
running as a silo, making it impossible for one
person to manage the process from end-to-end.
To get a clearer picture of this in the Windows
world let us take a look at what standard approaches
that most Windows administrators use today.
The Windows Administrator and Batch
Processing Automation
Windows administrators will be familiar with
these Windows-centric ways to automate and the
inherent problems:
- Custom integration by branching from one
environment to another, such as calling
a SQL script from a batch ile using the
SQL command line executable, or calling a
batch ile from a SQL script. This approach
uses heavy custom scripting, is difficult to
maintain, is difficult to document, and has
no clear best-practices.
- Using Windows Task Scheduler. This tool
does not currently handle workflows or
complex calendars. Even in the "Vista"
release it will only runs batch files,
executables, or send email
- Scheduling utilities, such as the ones built
into SQL Server, MOM, and SMS. These have
very limited calendaring abilities, limited
job tracking (e.g. status, success, failure) and
limited reach in complex, heterogeneous
environments.
The example approaches above do not simplify
the enterprise-wide orchestration of batch
processing. In fact, they offer no consistency: the
automation method used often depends on the
tool of choice for a particular script-writer at a
particular time, rather than a planned approach
to automation. Furthermore, they offer no native
ability for cross application, operating system,
domain, or even network boundaries.
In fact, Windows-centric automation may
have little or no ability at all on non-Windows
machines. For example, credentials for access to
an environment are either stored in clear-text in
the script, require user-interaction for automation
in that environment, or must be skipped entirely.
It is a tradeoff between the security risk of
storing clear-text credentials, or depending on
humans to run repetitive or iterative tasks.
When steps can be automated, the tasks and
the logic surrounding execution such as triggers,
conditions, and calendars must be custom coded,
often for each individual task.
Furthermore, task tracking must be custom-
coded into the tasks themselves, complicating
code maintenance. Tracking of run status and
success or failure results are required both
for orchestration itself as well as compliance
reporting. Central storage of task output, if
required, must be manually coded and placed into
a ile system or custom database. Encrypting this
often-sensitive data for transit is an advanced
development project, so when data is retained,
very often it is transmitted and stored insecurely.
In summary a variety of ineficiencies, risks
and weaknesses are introduced into the overall
environment:
- Reduced security
- Weakened compliance preparation
- Reduced reliability and high-availability
which is highly complex for any of these
scenarios
- No way to ind bottlenecks and optimize
execution
- Reduced centralization
The bottom line is that integration between
IT systems using existing tools must be custom-
coded or left undone. In addition to a host of risks
and weaknesses it also often puts the data center
in the position of relying on business users to
monitor system health and job status. This is an
unreliable and ineficient approach that leads to
increased costs.
The Solution
Tidal Software Enterprise Scheduler™ is a production-grade enterprise scheduler that helps
Windows experts fully reap the beneits of enterprise automation by eliminating the ineficiencies
described above. Tidal Enterprise Scheduler is tightly integrated with Microsoft Operations Manager
(MOM) and the Windows platform, and still allows you to automate complex and routine tasks in a
heterogeneous environment. In addition to being a service platform for business process automation,
it can radically simplify infrastructure activities such as backups, system maintenance, and database
maintenance tasks like consistency checks and re-indexing tables.
When evaluating enterprise scheduling
products the following four criteria, in addition
to support for MOM, must be met in order for
Windows experts to benefit:
- Ease-of-Use
The product must be easy to install and
simple enough for use by both Tier-1 IT staff and
business users.
- Single-Console Control
The product must offer a single console
from which to deine and manage all of the
tasks associated with your most complex
automation requirements.
- Heterogeneous Environment Operability
The product must allow you to schedule tasks
across various systems from a single console,
regardless of what applications and operating
environments are involved and regardless of
physical location. Task tracking, secure access and
credentials storage, output storage, and reporting
must seamlessly and intelligently cross environ-
ments, applications, and operating systems.
- Advanced Scheduling Features
- Nested scheduling to handle dependencies
and eliminate manual intervention for a long
sequence of tasks
- Both predeined calendars and unlimited user-
defined calendars of any complexity, thereby
ensuring speed and lexibility. Calendars must
not require scripting
- Ad hoc, user-dependent job scheduling so that
staff can initiate automation as-needed, or
react immediately and consistently to urgent
issues that need attention, such as task roll-
back, and ‘clean-up' routines
- Point-of-failure identification so that it is
faster to get back on track
- Remote Web access so staff can view the
schedule for any given day from any location
- Allows for managing jobs by exception. The
product should allow staff to interact with
the schedule only as-needed for handling
problems, freeing them to work on more
challenging, critical business issues instead of
constantly watching their automation jobs.
- A comprehensive security model so that
role-based security can be easily used to
assign staff privileges by duties and prevent
missteps and errors. The product should
include pre-deined security policy templates
and allow customized security policies, with
many different levels of privileges within the
scheduler. All users should have access to a
uniied console with security policies simply
limiting them to the views they are allowed to
see, and the tasks they are allowed to perform.
In short, a professional, enterprise grade
job scheduler used by Windows experts should
streamline enterprise-wide as well as focused
automation, and reduce the effort and time
associated with both complex and routine,
repetitive tasks. It should also easily and
securely integrate into the diverse application
and platform environments that are found
today in heterogeneous data centers, or will be
found eventually even in today's homogeneous
data centers after a merger or acquisition. An
enterprise grade automation tool provides a
platform to enable agility through automation
services: Business users can quickly tap into
the available infrastructure and easily create
new business process automation, and IT staff
can leverage the same service infrastructure to
automation IT maintenance. The two can even
blend together, optimizing infrastructure and
reducing collisions. For instance, once you have
end-to-end visibility of automation, you can
prevent the conlicts that arise from such things
as having a business user trying to close a quarter
just as a database administrator is trying to do
regular backups or database maintenance on the
same database.
Windows experts will ind that Tidal
Enterprise Scheduler scales and can manage
dozens to hundreds of thousands of tasks per
day. Also key to Windows experts is the fact
that Tidal's product eliminates cross-platform
complexities because its scalable, distributed
architecture works across platforms such as
Windows®, Unix®, Linux®, z/OS® OS/400® and
OVMS® and seamlessly integrates with leading
applications like SAP®, PeopleSoft
® and Oracle®
E-Business Suite, as well as leading BI solutions
and infrastructure technologies like SQL Server
and Oracle databases.
Tidal's Enterprise Scheduler is used in some
of the most demanding data centers in the world,
including Microsoft's own data centers. Windows
experts will quickly feel comfortable in the Tidal
environment with its easy to use graphical user
interface and point-and-click operation, tabbed
dialog boxes and visual choices for settings and
job process deinitions. From a single Enterprise
Scheduler client console, users can view the
processing workload for past, present and future
application job executions in real-time, and have
a user-friendly interface into cross-environment
workloads.
In conclusion, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler can
be the ideal addition to Windows administration.
It can radically simplify how experts handle
many routine infrastructure tasks, and provides
a platform for a service that allows both business
users and IT administrators to automate work in
the IT environment. For worklows, both complex
and simple, reducing the manual effort required
increases the lexibility, security and quality of
tasks that are handled while reducing the cost of
maintaining those tasks.
About Tidal Software
Tidal Software is a leading provider of
application scheduling and performance
management software that radically simpliies
IT operations by automating and integrating
performance and process management. Tidal's
solution puts IT operations management into the
business process using new levels of automation,
visibility, and control over systems. Tidal makes
applications such as SAP®, PeopleSoft®, and
Oracle E-business Suite™ more eficient,
reliable, and secure to return greater business
value. Tidal also gives IT deep visibility into and
precise control over new SOA-based composite
solutions consisting of packaged applications and
custom components in Java and .NET. General
Mills, HP, ING Direct, Microsoft and T-Mobile
are among the Tidal customers who use Tidal to
reduce operational costs by running IT at higher
eficiency rates and containing overall data center
footprints. Privately held, Tidal is venture-backed
by Kleiner Perkins Cauield & Byers, Novus
Ventures, Panorama Capital, and VantagePoint
Venture Partners.
For more information, contact Tidal Software
at 1-877-55-TIDAL or visit www.tidalsoftware.com.