Ok, I may not have been too enthusiastic in writing about our Pulse visit up until now, but as we just enjoyed a really great session about virtualized datacenters I thought this would be a good reason to start doing so. Ok, it’s quite a different kind of automation compared to what we deal with usually, but it was quite impressive to see a reporting service being installed “on demand” on a virtualization cluster during the demo part of the session by means of just a few clicks in Tivoli Provisioning Manager. Ok, so you may wonder what is so exciting about the automated installation of a virtual system? Well, aside from the fact that you felt that the speaker (Vanja Gorazi) was really deep into the technical stuff behind it, it was probably that the way this happened was simply done right. Instead of specifying you need an xOS with ySQL to support the zReporting system, you simply choose the type of service needed and do not need to worry about all packaging and stuff behind the scenes. Oh, and did I mention that automation didn’t stop with the installation but continued with automatic addition of required or removal of unused resources by means of a component named Intelligent Orchestrator? Of course, the rules engine behind it sounded quite basic, so I guess there may will be some more interesting perspectives around here… guess I’ll need some time to think about that when this is over…

…and this is to become my very first blog entry ever, altough certainly not the last. So I guess at first I should properly introduce myself. Most people I know simply refer to me as “cy” but there is still a small community of people who remind me that I do have a real name as well and that it is “Jens”. So what brings me here? Well, I’ve been designing and creating software for and with Chris at arago for over 10 years now with my part mostly being thinking of pragmatic (read programmable) solutions to the sometimes rather abstract ideas we come up with and also implementing them. And as I am also a certified deep diver, Chris asked me to invite you on a plunge into the depths of our automation concepts and the magic behind it once in a while around here.
Happy diving