IT Management 2.0

Rise of the Machines

The movie “The Terminator” paints a picture of computers and automation

Don't Panic: Machines and Automation Don't Mean Termination

 as a bad thing.  But nothing can be further from the truth…Unlike the bleak future portrayed in the movie, one thing is becoming perfectly clear:  machines do things faster, more efficiently, and with fewer mistakes.  And that’s good news - especially when you’re managing IT resources.

A Brief History

From the first time our ancestors wrapped their opposable thumbs around a stick and used it for increased leverage, reach or impact - humans have been figuring out how to build machines to make life easier.  Some will claim to miss the “good old days” but there’s a reason why everyone eventually ends up adopting forms of automation that are effective.  The most successful machines are the ones that introduce a fundamentally different way of doing things.  This is true even when it takes a long time for people to discover those new ways of doing things. 

For instance, the first cars were literally “horseless carriages.”  They looked just like a normal carriage, but instead of a horse, they had a motor with a chain driving the rear wheels.  Since you couldn’t steer the motor like you could a horse, the early cars adapted the tiller concept from a boat.  The tiller was pretty quickly swapped for a new feature - the steering wheel.  However, it took a long while for the “body-on-frame” construction technique of horse drawn carriages to give way to the more effective monocoque construction with its low weight and low center of gravity.  Computer systems, and how we build them, are no different.

A New Revolution:  Automating Computer Systems

When RAID storage arrays became the dominant storage approach, IT organizations pretty quickly stopped trying to manage and control the low-level formatting of the disks.  However, it took a long time for those same IT organizations to stop freaking out about where exactly on the disk their LUNs were located.  Honestly, it also took array manufacturers a while to figure out that striping everything to make all I/O average was not what people were looking for.  Eventually, vendors figured out that it really was better to tell the array what the I/O requirements where and let the array decide where to place the data (not coincidentally, EMC’s FAST technology takes this to a whole new level).

The Next Revolution:  Unified Computer Platforms

Unified platforms (those that combine network, storage and compute elements) represent another opportunity for doing things differently.  There are some benefits to be gained from the hardware integration alone - just like there were benefits from replacing a horse with a motor.  There are further benefits to be gained by using and automating the provisioning capabilities of the platform.  For instance, you can use software to logically configure a blade with the needed resources when it’s required rather than designing and procuring a physical server.

It’s only when you rethink your overall process of managing capacity and allocation of that capacity that you can truly achieve exponential gains in efficiency and agility.  To that end, EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager 2.0is introducing a service-driven automation approach to managing and provisioning capacity leveraging the VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform.  It allows you to “grade” your Vblock resources according to the services you want to offer, then provisions from the infrastructure according to the requirements you specify.  Not only does this execute provisioning faster and with fewer errors, it reduces the amount of time figuring out what to provision in the first place.

Wrapping it Up

As you take your journey to the next-generation of the computing infrastructure, you should embrace the revolution taking place and not be put off.  The reality is not portrayed by movies like The Terminator.  The fact of the matter is, this next-generation of automation is going to make your lives better.

And as you approach this next-generation, you really have to ask yourself - do you want a tiller, or a steering wheel?  Do you want to trade time spent executing tasks for time spent micro-managing provision decisions?  Or would you like to spend your time on more productive things like managing resource capacity. 

Whatever you do, make sure you don’t try to manage your next-generation infrastructure with an outdated approach to automation.

I’d love to know what you think.  Let’s keep the conversation going!!!

I’ll be back,

Phil

Change and Configuration, Cloud, Configuration Management Database (CMDB) Population, Data Center Automation and Compliance, Dependency Mapping, Network Management, Private Cloud, Service Management, Service Providers, Storage Resource Management (SRM), Virtualization Management EMC, Ionix, Ionix UIM, VCE, VMworld

Service Providers:  An Eye To the Cloud

In Part I  of this blog, we began to tackle the issue of infrastructure management solutions, their importance to service providers - especially in the era of cloud services.   As we stated in the first post:

The point is that new services are essential to help all service providers overcome shrinking revenues and compete effectively.  Telco providers, in particular, need to look to new services to bolster their legacy network income.

As always, the issue is helping customers overcome the challenges associated with launching new services and managing this ever-expanding

The Big Question: Service Providers and the Cloud

 and increasingly complexIT infrastructure.  Now we’ll look at how EMC Ionix approaches the situation and offers a solution for service providers.

EMC Ionix Can Help

1. EMC Ionix Eliminates Errors:  Automation allows service providers to remove the manual process from their day-to-day activities as they are both error-prone and time-consuming.  It will help them eliminate the cost of manually making the relationships between components on network and entire service infrastructure, including servers, applications and storage.  This becomes even more important within a growing and highly dynamic infrastructure.  Automation can save up to 70% of the time to isolate the problems, and these resources can then be re-deployed from fire-fighting to supporting the business.
2. EMC Ionix Accelerates Infrastructure Management:  By automating infrastructure discovery and problem identification, service providers can reduce the length of many management tasks by upwards of 90%.  Having a holistic approach to discovery, configuration management and fault management dramatically speeds finding and fixing problems on the infrastructure.  And by being able to execute day-to-day changes on the infrastructure, service providers are able to deliver new services much more quickly and easily.
3. EMC Ionix Optimizes Infrastructure:  Service Providers are able to optimize their infrastructures by avoiding unnecessary outages and service downtime due to mis-configurations and unplanned changes in their environment.  Manual change management causes more than 80% of infrastructure problems, so it’s essential to prevent configuration errors, such as mis-typing or interoperability issues by validating changes before execution.  In addition, it allows them to run “what-if” scenarios to understand what impact a particular configuration change might have on the infrastructure.
4. EMC Ionix Consolidates Silos:  By having a management platform that can work across silos, service providers are able to consolidate toolsets for server, network, storage and application configurations to avoid finger-pointing and a swivel-chair management style.  Proactive fault management allows benchmarking of normal network behavior so that action can be taken if it deviates from the norm.  In addition, the information will be useful to help different entities within the service provider to collaborate together, see their impact and make support handover easier.
5. EMC Ionix Helps in Compliance with Internal/External Regulations:  Finally, automated configuration checking will allow the service provider to ensure their infrastructure is in compliance with both their own IT policies but also with regulations such as PCI, HIPAA, and SOX.  It allows them to improve security by having automatic policy

Participate and See For Yourself

Hopefully by now you have a better idea about infrastructure management and its importance to service providers - especially in the era of the cloud.  But don’t just believe us.  We have some great customer testimonials from such companies as Swisscom and Interoute to better illustrate our point.  In addition, we’re opening up to service providers to tell us what they think.  If you’re a European service provider, we encourage you to take our survey here.

Additionally, I’d love to hear what you think.  Please feel free to send comments and feedback.

Suhela

Cloud, Private Cloud, Service Management, Virtualization Management EMC, Ionix, IT Management, Private Cloud, Virtualization

In Part I of this blog, I spent some time discussing the wonders of the Vegas

EMC Ionix: Taking Cisco Live by Storm

 buffet and how it relates to IT management (not as much of  a stretch as you might think).  We discussed the importance of getting a lay of the land when managing your IT environment and how automated discovery can go a long way to ensure critical information is always accurate and up-to-date.  Now let’s take this one step further.

First Things First

The Vegas buffet dining experience presents you with a major dilemma - and no, I’m not referring to whether or not you remembered to wear the pants with the expandable waistband!  The number of options can be overwhelming.  In short, you have to prioritize.  If, like me, you’re trying to eat healthy, your best strategy is to put those “better” dining choices at the top of your list.  For me, it meant starting each breakfast buffet with a full plate of fresh fruit and oatmeal.  If I told myself I could eat the same amount of fruit and oatmeal after eating other (less healthy) options.  I either would not have eaten the right amount or not gotten to it all.

IT Management Lessons

Much like prioritizing at the breakfast buffet, FIFO (first-in, first-out) for critical processes such as problem and incident management is a recipe for disaster.  Just because a network printer stopped responding before the order entry system went down doesn’t mean that the printer gets addressed first.  If you haven’t already done so, think about how you can add a level of business-impact to your triage process.

Just because you can do something doesn’ t mean you should be doing it.  Again, just because you can pick the unhealthy option doesn’t mean it’s the right answer.  Focus management attention on those items that either need significant improvement or can yield big results fast.  For many organizations, change, configuration, and compliance management still represents a large opportunity to do both.

Solve Your Problems Before They Have a Major Impact

This morning, one of the “fixtures” of any Vegas breakfast buffet - the cooked-to-order omelette station - had a problem.  No customers “noticed” when things were going smoothly at the station, but they all noticed when the line built quickly, omelettes weren’t being served and new orders weren’t being taken.

For some reason, the burner being used stopped working.  The “service” that was custom omelettes was broken.  Then, a very interesting thing happened: an immediate assessment was made by a top-level person, the burner was swapped out with a new one, and the omelette station was back in business again - just like that.

IT Management Lessons

Much like the top-level person who fixed the omelette station, you need a trusted, top-level monitoring system that can filter out the static (usually tangenital, symptomatic event messages) and serve as your compass pointing you exactly to what’s wrong so you can put the right person on the right problem right away.  Automated root-cause analysis can do just that.

Service impacts will occur.  The IT management omlette station will sometimes be broken.  That’s a given.  What you can influence is your response to problems and incidents.  In the omlette example, the service impact was minimal because the system authoratively provided the action needed to resstore service.  But it could have gotten much worse if a non-integrated, serial, one-off approach was taken. 

Someone could have checked the natural gas supply.  Someone else could have checked the supply line.  Another person than could have checked the burner jet for clogs.  But they all would have said “nothing wrong here” and failed to restore service because a crack in the center part of the burner was at fault. 

Now, think about about how you would handle a similar situation in IT operations:  Are you more apt to serially send out domain-specific staff to check on things that might be the root-cause.  Or seek guidance from an intelligent monitoring system.  I’d opt for the latter - as long as it can be easily automated and aligned to the business process IT is supporting and enabling.

Wrapping it Up

I could keep going - but, hey, I’ve got buffets to conquer!  Time to throw things over to you.  Do you like my analogy (didn’t think I could do it, did you?)  What about the lessons derived?  Are they right?  Did I miss something big?

Post a comment and let me know!

Brian

Network Management, Private Cloud, Virtualization Management Cisco Live, EMC, EMC Ionix, IT Management

This week, I’m part of a team staffing EMC’s presence at Cisco Live in Las Vegas.  At big industry events like these, the pace is always frenetic:  It seems

The Vegas Buffet and IT management: Believe it or not, there are parallels

like never more than two minutes pass before someone comes by the booth, wants to talk about their IT management challenges, seeks information, or attends a theater presentation.

The Magic of the Buffet

One secret I learned long ago to help ensure I have enough stamina to make it through the eight-hour days is to have a really good breakfast in the morning.  It puts enough fuel in my tank to ensure I can last the day.  As such, that puts the breakfast buffet at my hotel a high priority.

Now, I won’t bore you with a complete list of the food options - this isn’t a dining blog, after all.  But for whatever reason, the muse that is the inspiration based on observation visited me at that buffet.  And I kept connecting the dots for me between the buffet and IT management.

That’s right:  IT management - probably the last thing you’d expect to find parallels to at a Vegas-style buffet.  But they’re very much there.  There are a lot of them and if I spent more time pondering it, I’d probably think of more than just these.

You Need a Lay of the Land

As every buffet veteran knows, the first thing to do is not pick up a plate right away start loading up on the first food encountered.  That’s a rookie mistake.  Veterans know to first canvass the entire buffet area - end-to-end and thoroughly - to see what food options are available.  And where the lines might be to avoid, before even thinking about grabbing a plate.  If you don’t do this, you could well miss out having enough room in your stomach for one of the better food options.

I was somewhat guilty the first day.  I did go around and look at everything first.  But I found it surprising that I did not come across donuts or muffins or pastries.  In my mind, I made the assumption that a purposeful decision was made not to offer these less healthy options.  It turns out these bakary items were just hiding in plain sight albeit in a separate, dimly lit section.

IT Management Lessons: Observe

OK, so here it goes.  Let’s link the Vegas buffet to IT management (didn’t think I’d ever get this this, did you?).  It turns out that effective IT management starts with having accurate, up-to-date information about the environment being managed.  Just like taking the time to browse all the buffet options before starting to take food, you should have a complete picture of your environment.  Once you’ve got your baseline, there’s a standard against which you can measure and track (which is important for critical processes such as change, configuration, and compliance management).

Even if you think you’ve got it all covered, you probably don’t.  Just like I missed the donuts, you can easily miss elements of your IT environment (such as end-user-installed wireless access points, rogue servers or open ports).  This is especially true if your process involves some steps of manual information gathering.

Automated discovery can go a long way here, helping provide an accurate baseline of your IT environment, and then help ensure that “go-to” information is accurate and up-to-date.  Given the ever-increasing pace of change in the IT environment - and its expected, almost-ridiculous acceleration as next-generation IT models (such as fully virtualized and private cloud infrastructures) are deployed - automated discovery has quickly moved from the nice-to-have column to a mandatory part of any good infrastructure management tool-set.

OK all this talk of IT management is making me hungry.  Time to head off to the buffet.  In part II tomorrow, I’ll cover the importance of prioritization and the need to resolve potential issues quickly (for both IT mangement and the buffet of course!)

I would like to know what you think.  Please leave a comment and let me know…

Brian

Cloud, Virtualization Management Cisco Live, EMC, EMC Ionix, Private Cloud