granular configuration automation is here

K n o w t h e D i f f e r e n c e ™

WELCOME TO TODAY’S WEBINAR

Granular Configuration Automation Is Here!

Webinar

Sept 1, 2010

Something is broken

3 | Evolven Propriety & Confidential

4 | Evolven Propriety & Confidential4 | Evolven Propriety & Confidential

THE RISK OF DOWNTIME IN NUMBERS

of outage risk per month Alinean



of downtime per yearGartner



MTTR per medium outageIT Process Institute



of availability and performance errors are due to faulty configurations

Enterprise Management Association


Critical Financial Information Leaked

The Cause?a single file was not properly deployed during a patch deployment…

Duration : A few weeks

Impact• Lost credibility • Customers sue• IT staff spends days plugging

holes• Full IT reorganization

Erroneous ATM Transactions

The Cause?a JAR file was not properly configured to production database during release

Duration : 2 days

Impact• Class action lawsuit pending• IT staff puts in days to recover

Major Slowdown in Retail Banking System

The Cause? a debug switch on one of the application servers was turned on…

Duration: 2 weeks

Impact• Customer complaints

skyrocket• Employee productivity falls

by 20%• 10 IT people dedicated to

investigation efforts


IBM Websphere Application Server holds over

16,000configuration parameters

alone


114 IT Infrastructure and Operations managers

SURVEY: HOW VALUABLE IS GRANULAR CONFIGURATION INFORMATION ?

Over

75%“VERY VALUABLE“


WHY NOW?

16,000 Configuration parameters to Websphere Application Server alone…

COMPLEXITY

Virtualization and Deployment Automation result in limited

visibility into environment configuration

Significant increase inpace of change

(monthly releases, daily updates)

DYNAMICS NEW IT INFRASTRUCTURE

LIMITED VISIBILITY INTO GRANULAR CONFIGURATION

STABILITY EFFICIENCY COMPLIANCE


WHAT IS

GRANULAR CONFIGURATION

AUTOMATION


PILLARS OF GRANULAR CONFIGURATION AUTOMATION EFFECTIVENESS

PRESENT information essential for IT automation such as a detailed bill-of-material, granular changes, configuration differences etc. in a clear, easily available manner

DISCOVER an IT environment's configuration at the most granular level

ANALYZE the high volume of identified granular information to focus on what matter most


POTENTIAL APPLICATIONS PUTTING GRANULAR CONFIGURATION TO USE

• Tap into environments’ configuration information at the granular level

• Leverage granular information for many different applications

GranularConfiguration

GranularConfiguration

GranularConfiguration Information

Knowledge

ReleaseValidation

Security


GRANULAR CONFIGURATION AUTOMATION ENHANCES ITIL V3 INITIATIVES

Less Risk, More Uptime and Greater Stability


TAMING THE VITUALIZATION BEAST

Virtualization brings new configuration challenges.

Granular Configuration Automation Can Help.


“The benefits of virtualization are eroded when virtual machine go unchecked”eWeek

VIRTUALIZATION BENEFITS ARE BEING UNDERMINED

“The downside of virtualization is losing the visibility into my environment”Jon Blomeier, Hershey

“A top-down, application-centric approach is needed”Forrester

“Virtual Machine Sprawl Is a Rising Datacenter Cost” IDC


VIRTUALIZING IT ENVIRONMENT –REAL CONFIGURATION CHALLENGES

LIMITED VISIBILITY INTO VM CONTENT• The VM encapsulates the guest environment turning it into black box• Dynamic allocation of VMs skews visibility into the environment architecture and configuration• Abundant amounts of environmental information hide real issues

LIMITING INFRASTRUCTURE PERSPECTIVE• Separation of virtual infra from guest content drives management by VM rather than by the application• The focus of virtualization vendors on just the virtualization platform complicates business application

management for an enterprise

SPRAWL• Ease of VM deployment causes uncontrolled spread of VMs• Drift/deviation from desired configuration create risks from application to virtual infrastructure• “Invisible” images

? ?

??

“The cost of managing virtual environments may be higher than expected…”Gartner


APPLIES AN APPLICATION-LEVEL PERSPECTIVE• Logical architecture view independent of physical or virtual topology• Combine virtual and physical environments into a single view to control heterogeneous environments• Out-of-the-box support for common application technologies (Websphere AS, Websphere PS,

WebLogic, Jav, .NET, ASP.NET applications and more)• Visual modeling of custom applications (no programming)

CONTROL SPRAWL AND MANAGE DRIFT• Powerful end-to-end environment (and not server) comparison • Compare inherently different environments • Apply analytics to focus on what matters most

HOW GRANULAR CONFIGURATION AUTOMATION HELPS

DELIVERS GRANULAR VISIBILITY INTO THE VM CONTENT • Top-down: application > application infrastructure > guest OS > virtual infrastructure • Turn date overflow into actionable information through impact knowledge base


CMDB IS DEAD, LONG LIVE CMDB


GRANULAR CONFIGURATION AND CMDB: A HOLISTIC APPROACH

CMDB

IT Environment

1Enriching CMDB with granular information

2Configuration Verification and Audit – ensuring exact representation of production

CMDB

K n o w t h e D i f f e r e n c e ™

Evolven Comparison™A Granular Configuration Automation Solution

KEEP IT TICKINGWhen any little mis-configuration of a single parameter poses high risk to your environment, you need EvolvenComparison for detecting threats and minimizing downtime.


EVOLVEN COMPARISON OVERVIEW

• A Granular Configuration Automation solution that helps to obtain and maintain environment stability

• Identify and analyze changes and differences that put environment stability at risk, by:

• Comparing different environments• Comparing current environment with its historical working snapshot or

golden baseline

• Key capabilities:• Compares the entire environment

(applications and underlying infrastructure)• Compares environment configuration and

content in-depth• Analyzes changes and differences with

focus on criticality and impact

EVOLVEN SOLUTIONSLess Risk, More Uptime and Greater Stability

Release with ConfidenceBrings certainty and reduce risk, by assuring integrity in environments, providing visibility into the release content and ensuring that the release transitions as expected

Release ValidationA High Stakes Race Against TimeSlash investigation time and effort by a staggering 50%, minimize system downtime and prevent incidents from impacting overall operations

Incident Investigation

Don't Let Your Disaster Recovery Environment Let You DownVerify consistency and integrity of your disaster recovery environment, and enable a compliant environment that won't let you down

Disaster Recovery VerificationBoost Your ITIL Initiatives Evolven Comparison assists in many ITIL v3 areas – helping customers achieve less risk, more uptime and greater stability.

ITIL

Tame the Virtualization Beast Take control of virtualization’s new configuration challenges and risk: manage drift, ensure integrity and control sprawl. Reduce outage risk and minimize downtime

Virtualizationhttp://www.evolven.com/solutions.html LEARN MORE:

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http://www.evolven.com/solutions/release-validation.html�

http://www.evolven.com/solutions/disaster-recovery.html�

http://www.evolven.com/solutions/itil.html�

http://www.evolven.com/solutions/incident-investigation.html�

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LEARN MORE

Evolven Solutionshttp://www.evolven.com/solutions.html

Bloghttp://www.evolven.com/blog

Videos, Presentations etc.http://www.evolven.com/newsroom/resources.html

THANK YOU!

Feedback, Ideas, Questions:Martin Perlin – Director of [email protected]

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granular configuration automation is here

Documents

configuration differences

granular levelanalyze

granular changes

numbers of downtime

numbers of outage risk

numbers mttr

numbers of availability

deployment automation