Few weeks ago I've published with Enrica Alberti an article on
IBM developer works about how we have automated the reboot of machines on our
IBM Workload Automation SaaS environment.
This is an example of how we used TWS itselft to manage our infrastructure for Workload Automation SaaS. On our SaaS we are running tens of servers running the product for the customers, in addition to them we have a couple of machines used to control the infrastructure and where we are running an internal TWS used to automate any recurring task:
- create, configure and deprovision VMs used to run customer subscriptions
- create, delete, suspend, resume customer subscriptions
- add and remove users to customer subscriptions
For these tasks we have created some REST APIs that are invoked by the Service Engage common infrastructure components and that submit to TWS the appropriate job stream to actually modify the environment.
In addition we have some scheduled housekeeping job streams and now the reboot process described in the article.
The actual work we need to make on the environment is minimal, with all the operations running automatically and easy to monitor and recover thanks to TWS.
This experience reinforce the message that automation can save a lot of effort, especially when considered and planned at the beginning of the project or quickly recognized later if missed at the first analysis.
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