Chris Boos on Automation

The automation engine is a computer program and as such it follows the simple scheme of “Input – Processing – Output”. The engine takes care of the processing part. So in order to talk about the quality of such a program, we have to examine the I/O scheme of the automation engine.

There are two lanes of external input into the automation engine. First there is the model of the IT infrastructure and application landscape the automation Engine is to work on. The second input stream is monitoring or event data from all the components of the infrastructure described by the first input stream. The automation engine only has one internal input or configuration stream. This stream defines the rule set of the engine in an appropriate format. This rule set will enable the “black box” to determine which action has to be executed automatically as well as the conditions permitting the execution of a certain action. This configuration stream also includes the actions themselves or links to a repository of actions – e.g. scripts written by administrators.

The automation engine will produce two output streams. One is an external stream documenting the actions taken by the automation engine to a service management or similar system as well as exporting skill management data to interface with manual operations effectively. The main output of the automation engine is a stream of commands to the components described in the IT model previously mentioned.

The internal input and output of the automation engine is the primary processing of the software and therefore part of the implementation of an automation engine. Proper functionality of the engine strongly relies on the quality of the external input streams (IT Model and event or monitoring data). The integration of the automation engine into the manual administration processes or rather the control of the manual processes though the automation engine determines the effectiveness of the operational workforce and the degree of automation that can be reached.

Thus the input data and the integration of the output produced by the automation engine are issues that must not be underestimated. It is not enough to have some sort of CMDB to import components of the IT infrastructure to be operated upon. The input has to include relationship and attribute information that are at the necessary level of detail and the monitoring streams have to be connected to the configuration items and their relations. Otherwise the automation engine will not operate at the desired level of effectiveness or even worse generate false commands to be executed.

I have found that in many cases the configuration of the automation engine – especially hooking it up to the IT infrastructure and the available monitoring environment – is best done manually. Many CMDB implementations can be used to cross check the configuration but I am still looking for a CMDB implementation that will give an automation engine a good IT model and access to the required monitoring and event data.