strategy automation and orchestration

A n a l y t i c s . I n f o r m a t i o n We e k . c o m

Report ID: S3260811

S t r a t e g y S e s s i o n

Automation & Orchestration: Prepare for Successful Deployment

Automation and orchestration technologies can make IT more

efficient and better able to serve the business by streamlining

common tasks and speeding service delivery. But it doesnt

always go as smoothly as wed like. In this report, we outline

the potential snags and share strategies and best practices to

ensure successful implementation.

By Joe Onisick

A u g u s t 2 0 1 1$ 9 9

Presented in conjunction with

4 Authors Bio

5 Executive Summary

6 Understanding Automation and Orchestration

8 Know the Potential Pitfalls

9 Set Your Scope

11 Design for Scale

11 Assess the Products

14 Deployment Time

15 The Payoff

16 Related Reports

CONT

ENTS

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ABOUT US | InformationWeek Analytics experienced analysts arm business technology

decision-makers with real-world perspective based on a combination of qualitative and quantitative

research, business and technology assessment and planning tools, and technology adoption best

practices gleaned from experience.

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A u t o m a t i o n a n d O r c h e s t r a t i o n


2 August 2011 2011 InformationWeek, Reproduction Prohibited

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CONT

ENTS

6 Figure 1: Use of Private Cloud Tools

7 Figure 2: Most Beneficial Private Cloud Capability

8 Figure 3: Expected Change in Volume of New Service Requests for 2012

10 Figure 4: Importance of Automation

12 Figure 5: Extent of Automation Use

14 Figure 6: Automation Challenges





Joe OnisickDefine the Cloud

Joe Onisick is technical solutions architect and founder of

Define the Cloud and works for a systems integrator leading the

analysis and adoption of emerging data center technologies and

practices. Joe is a data center architect with more than 12 years

experience in servers, storage virtualization and networks.

Through his experience as a technology trainer, developer and consultant,

Joe has been responsible for designing and deploying next-generation data

center technologies and converged infrastructures and training IT teams on

their use from product inception. Most recently, as the EMEA CTO for an

international training and consulting firm, he worked closely with

European channel partners to help customers design and deploy converged

infrastructures to meet their rapidly changing business demands.





Automation and orchestration can make IT more flexible and respon-sive to changing business requirements. Customers use automation toolsto streamline repetitive data center processes such as server operating sys-tem and application deployment, decreasing provisioning time for newservices and reducing the risk of administrative mistakes. Orchestrationlinks a variety of automated tasks together to provision a new service.

The combination of automation and orchestration allows IT deployment tomatch the speed of business, providing rapid time to market for new ini-tiatives. But there are also challenges in rolling out automation and orches-tration. In this report, we outline successful strategies to automate andorchestrate IT systems and uncover potential pitfalls to avoid.

In particular, companies must be sure not to underestimate the time ormoney required to deploy these products. Also, the complexity of your ITenvironment will have a significant effect on deployment and use of thesetools. Finally, you have to prepare the IT staff for the changes that automa-tion and orchestration will have on operations, and ensure theyve beenproperly trained on the tools.

We recommend that companies strongly consider the use of professionalservices or third-party integrators when deploying automation and orches-tration products. Thats because these products require significant integra-tion with existing systems, so having experts on hand can smooth outdeployment bumps.

We also recommend that companies take full advantage of the meteringand chargeback capabilities of these tools, even if you dont bill internaldepartments. These options can help IT track resource usage by depart-ment, which is critical information when it comes time to allocate budgetand prioritize resources.

Finally, once you reach the deployment stage, notch up one or two easy winsto help maintain the project momentum. This will also improve the confi-dence of your IT team to tackle more complex phases of the deployment.

EXECUTIVE S

UMMARY





Understanding Automation and OrchestrationAutomation and orchestration are critical to helping IT deliver business services to both inter-nal and external customers. Automation puts programmed processes in place for repetitivetasks such as provisioning a server or allocating storage. This saves administrators time hav-ing to perform manual functions over and over, freeing them up for more strategic initiatives.For example, IT may write a script to create a SAN zone, a storage LUN and LUN mask for anew server.

Orchestration ties disparate automated processes and IT resources together. For example,when a new server needs to be brought online, an orchestration tool would kick off the abovestorage process, along with a network and compute process to fully provision the server.

Orchestration systems use workflows to define the process from start to finish. Additionally,orchestration may also provide a portal to the resource consumer, such as a business unit in an

Data: InformationWeek Analytics/Network Computing 2011 State of the Data Center Survey of 427 business technology professionals, March 2011

Are you using private cloud tools (that is, tools to create pools of virtualized server, storage and network resources) in your infrastructure?

Use of Private Cloud Tools

We have full automation to provision combined network, storage and server configurations

We are not consideringprivate cloud tools

6%

14%

We are currently evaluatingprivate cloud tools

38%

25%17%

We have limited private cloud tools deployed in production

We can provision combined network, storage and server configurations with some effort

R2120511/16

Figure 1





enterprise, to order a service. When properly designed, automation and orchestration canreduce common mistakes, making application or service deployments more reliable throughtested repeatable processes.

The challenge with automation and orchestration tools is that, when improperly implement-ed, they can cause more harm than good. A mistake in the automation can lead to problemsin the infrastructure. Additionally, automation and orchestration tools are typically complexand costly to implement, which can stall an automation/orchestration rollout in the enterprise.Below well discuss common challenges with automation and orchestration, and discuss tech-niques to surmount them.

Have a goal in mind before starting down the automation or orchestration path. Dont letyourself get wrapped up in technical detailsstay focused on the final business objectives foryour deployment. End-goal thinking is the best prescription to avoid project-stall.

Base: 265 respondents at organizations using or evaluating private cloud toolsData: InformationWeek Analytics/Network Computing 2011 State of the Data Center Survey of 427 business technology professionals, March 2011

What private cloud capability has, or will, provide your data center with the greatest benefit?Most Beneficial Private Cloud Capability

User self service provisioning of combined network, storage and server resources

Automated IT provisioning ofcombined network, storage

and server resources

24%

Other

Resource tracking

39%

1%

16% 20%

Dynamic load allocation

R2120511/17

Figure 2





Know the Potential PitfallsThree pitfalls can derail your automation/orchestration project: Underestimating the time andcosts of implementing automation and orchestration, environmental complexity, and failure toprepare your IT department.

The cost of implementing true automation and orchestration is significant. Ensure you proper-ly assess both the software and implementation/services costs. Out-of-the-box functionality istypically limited with automation and orchestration tools because each customer environmentis unique. This means youll spend significant time and money after the initial purchase inaligning the products to meet your requirements.

A saying I favored as a Marine was, Complexity kills. The same holds true for automationand orchestration deployments. The more complex the underlying infrastructure, the more

Data: InformationWeek Analytics 2011 IT Automation Survey of 388 business technology professionals, April 2011

Regardless of whether the service development budget increases, in 2012 do you expect the number of new service or service enhancement requests to increase, decrease or stay the same?

Expected Change in Volume of New Service Requests for 2012

Increase

Decrease

57%

Stay the same

5%

38%

R2780611/21

Figure 3





difficult and expensive the automation and orchestration will be. Additionally, complexityincreases the chances of failure at all layers of the stack.

Our advice: Dont jump into large-scale automation or orchestration projects until your infra-structure is properly designed and ready. Infrastructure is the foundation these tools will bebuilt on and, as such, is the key to success. Consolidate as much as possible by removingunneeded components and standardizing on equipment types and vendors. Ideally youll haveas few disparate systems as possibleone storage type, one server type, one switch type andso on. Remember that every disparate management interface or tool will require another levelof customization for the automation/orchestration platform.

As with any project, the IT department needs to be prepared, trained and ready to adopt thenew processes. The department requires a strong understanding of current manual processes,scripting, and any automation thats already in place. This should be documented thoroughlyand workflows should be created wherever possible.

Additionally, automation and orchestration will require the organization to adapt, and adoptnew models. Team boundaries will blur or disappear and roles will change. This organizationalupheaval can be one of the most difficult pieces, and must be planned for.

The more mature your operational processes are prior to beginning an automation/orchestra-tion rollout, the better off you are. Having staff familiar with or trained in ITIL or similarprocess-oriented systems is valuable, though not necessarily a requirement. If internal staffdoesnt have expertise in automation and orchestration, you may find it particularly worth-while to consider consulting services to assist in the process.

Set Your ScopeProperly scoping your project is essential for success. Dont aim to transform your entiremenu of IT services all at once. Before you start testing products or talking to vendors, decidewhich tasks are repetitive enough to automate, and which services youd like to orchestrate.

Tasks such as OS provisioning, application deployment, patching, disk management and net-work provisioning are typically automated easily. These can then be tied into higher-levelorchestration workflows, which can deploy services from end to end.





Once you have the scope in place, set common-sense guidelines around automation andorchestration. For example, a general guideline might be that the time it takes to automate aprocess must provide a return within six months. If a manual task takes one hour of the stor-age administrators time and one hour of the network administrators time plus one hour forcoordination, you have got a three-hour task. If that task is performed once a week, then in sixmonths that task requires 72 hours. If it will take 72 or fewer hours to automate the task andtest the results, then you are within your guidelines.

Any task thats not included in the initial scope may always be added at a later time.Remember that automation and orchestration will provide more time for IT staff to focus onstrategic initiatives once in place. Those extra cycles available after implementation will allowthem to focus on the more complicated processes without bogging down the primary rollout.

Youll also want to decide what you want to deliver from your orchestration catalog. Do youhave developers that need infrastructure, or business units that need database capacity on

32%

Base: 388 respondents in April 2011 and 362 in May 2009Data: InformationWeek Analytics IT Automation Survey of business technology professionals

Critically important

Very important

Somewhat important

Not very important

27%

54%55%

13%16%

1%2%

As data center, storage and application infrastructures get more complex, how important is automation to the overall future of IT as a discipline?

Importance of Automation

2011 2009

R2780611/1

Figure 4





demand? These services will need to be designed and integrated into the orchestration layerand properly presented to users via the portal.

Design for ScaleThink big! When deploying automation and orchestration tools, you need to ensure the toolsand your infrastructure can support growth. Dont build based on where you are as an organi-zation, build based on where you expect to be with growth.

Its easy to get caught up in a cost game and shoehorn a deployment into the smallest sizepossible. But if youre successful with an IT automation and orchestration deployment, yourservices and resources will be more usable to the consumers, and that means theyll find moreuses. ITs job is to enable the business, so you must ensure that, as business users develop newservices and demand more capacity, you have it there to give.

Automation and orchestration deployments are time consuming and service intensive todeploy, so the worst mistake you can make is deploying in such a way that youve boxed inthe resources. Youll need to estimate a reasonable growth percentage for the automatedinfrastructure, and be able to break that down by resource type: server, storage, automationtool, orchestration tool, etc. Typically these resources wont scale linearly, so youll need toplan accordingly.

The key to building for successful scale is a modular automation processes, in which automationscripts can be used across multiple processes and applied to as many workflows as possible.

Assess the ProductsWith the prerequisites met and the scope and scale defined, its time to assess the availabletools for automation and orchestration. All the major IT vendors have tools available, as dodozens of boutique software companies and startups, so assessing available products can betricky. As a general rule of thumb, tools from hardware vendors will work well if yourinfrastructure consists primarily of their hardware. For more heterogeneous hardware envi-ronments, independent software companies such as BMC or CA may offer a more versatilefit.





Look for products that can support chargeback. Chargeback is key, even if you dont bill busi-ness units for IT services, because it shows the value of the deployment once complete andprovides visibility into who uses which resources. In most organizations IT is a cost center,and usually has to fight with profit centers for budget approval. If you have accurate, real-timedata on how departments are consuming resources, it will be easier to find sponsors for newequipment. Additionally, if particular departments use more resources than others, IT has a setof metrics available for the business to decide how to act (purchase more equipment or scaleback the departments consumption of IT resources).

Where possible, carry out proof of concept. Most any product can look good in a presentationor demo, but your environment, staff and requirements are unique. Tailor your POC as closelyto your real-world deployment as possible, integrating with or simulating actual workloadsand equipment. With the POC in place, ensure key staff is given appropriate time andresources to deploy and test within the environment. Its far too easy for IT staff to get

10%

Base: 388 respondents in April 2011 and 362 in May 2009Data: InformationWeek Analytics IT Automation Survey of business technology professionals

Extensive use

Significant use

Some use

Little use

No use

10%

30%33%

42%38%

16%15%

2%4%

Which of the following best describes your organizations use of data center automation tools today?Extent of Automation Use

2011 2009

R2780611/3

Figure 5





wrapped up in the day-to-day and neglect the testing and development time available during aPOC. To avoid this, ensure IT management is on board and understands the importance ofusing the POC as a means to ensure deployment success.

Besides the ever present financial considerations, there are several other factors to take intoaccount when evaluating products:

Integration: Most orchestration software stacks are bundles of other products, new and old,built in house and acquired. Ensure you understand exactly what your orchestration productor suite comprises and how the different pieces fit together; chances are, the more separateproducts in the suite, the more complexand complexity kills. In addition, examine the wayin which the tools integrate with your existing systems and software, typically API integrationand access points. Your automation and orchestration products are going to have to communi-cate with a variety of systems in your environment, so avoid proprietary protocols unless theyprovide significant enough value to outweigh the inherent lock-in.

Professional Services: Given that automation and orchestration tools are such complex beasts,youd be wise to set aside budget for professional services, whether from the vendor or a third-party consultant or integrator. Even in companies with a rock-solid IT staff, its typically mostcost-effective to have an expert assist in deployment and configuration. Comparison shop, butdont choke on the price tag: These are high-end services and youre paying to have someonewho knows the ropes do it right, one time, as well as transfer that knowledge to your staff.

IT Skillset: Automation and orchestration tools will require scripting/programming knowledgeas well as an understanding of process definition. Your staff needs to know how to manage thesystem, add new services, and build new workflows.

Out-of-the Box Functionality: Custom automation and scripting is a very time-consuming,potentially budget-breaking process. This extends the ROI period and can tie up IT resources.Out-of-the-box functionality can alleviate some of this pain by allowing the product to providevalue more quickly while youre rolling out more advanced services. This type of functionalityis typically limited due to the unique requirements of each environment.

That said, tasks such as deploying virtual machines and virtual hosts are typical of out-of-the-boxfunctionstake advantage of such built-in capabilities. If youre building a private cloud archi-





tecture out of an integrated set of servers, storage and networking, youll find tools with moreout-of-the-box workflows and processes in place because the vendor has done much of the inte-gration work.

Deployment TimeThe biggest potential pitfall during the deployment phase is possibility of the project stalling.If the scope and assessment phase were done properly, youll probably have some easy wins

58%

42%

36%

30%

29%

25%

21%

17%

Note: Three responses allowedData: InformationWeek Analytics 2011 IT Automation Survey of 388 business technology professionals, April 2011

Expense of automation tools

Staff education and retraining

Integrating tools across platforms (servers, networks, storage)

Unforeseen costs in integration/deployment

Lack of suitable automation tools

Platform interoperability

Dealing with change control

Codifying IT processes (i.e., run book creation)

Acclimating management and personnel to automation

Other

17%

3%

What are the top challenges your organization has faced in automating its data center?Automation Challenges

R2780611/7

Figure 6





as you stand up the automation/orchestration layers and begin applying them, particularly ifyou can use out-of-the-box functions. While early wins are key to gathering project momen-tum, dont use them as a baseline for how the whole project should flow. For example, IT staffmembers are typically familiar and comfortable with server virtualization, so automated virtualserver provisioning may happen quickly. By contrast, end-to-end hardware provisioning willbe much more intense and time consuming, so if this phase of your deployment doesnt hap-pen as fast as virtual server provisioning, dont be discouraged.

Use early wins to bolster morale and ensure constant forward push, but be prepared to intermixsome low-hanging-fruit with more difficult projects. This allows you to build confidence andteam knowledge, and the lessons learned in an initial task will be important in deploying morechallenging services. Once you slay a more complicated piece of the beast, it will be impossiblefor anyone on your team to bring an it cant be done attitude to the overall project.

Finally, avoid sloppy mistakes during deployment. They will quickly amplify as you automateand orchestrate. For example, an error in an automated disk-provisioning script is minor on itsown; a single disk isnt deployed or is deployed incorrectly. But when that script becomes partof an orchestrated workflow, it becomes much more dangerous. If that workflow deploys vir-tualization hosts from end to end (storage, network, compute, OS and so on) and you test itafter the fact without knowing the automation error, it can take hours to pinpoint and solvethe problem. Test, test and retest at each phase.

The PayoffThe benefits of an automated and orchestrated environment far exceed the risks and costswhen properly executed. They place IT in a position to become a trusted service partner forbusiness units that need fast and responsive deployment.

Automation and orchestration deployments can be challengingclearly, they are not withouthurdlesbut the tools, resources and knowledge exist and are proven. Know the pain pointsgoing in, prepare the infrastructure, pick the tools and deploy with caution.





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