Whitepaper Tidal Software TM Tidal Enterprise Scheduler TM and Microsoft Windows Automate to Optimize: The Foundation for Data Center Efficiency
Automate to Optimize - The Foundation for Data Center Efficiency Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Microsoft Windows Introduction & Purpose Data centers experience constant change under pressure from technology and business drivers. IT systems are becoming more, not less complex as new technologies are introduced, and IT staffs are not growing to keep pace with the growth in size and complexity of the typical data center. Windows administrators need to radically simplify both complex and routine tasks if they are going to effectively respond to the constant pressure to deliver increasing value with limited resources. The most effective thing Windows administrators can do to address this issue is to minimize duties associated with maintaining the existing infrastructure. There are several ways Windows administrators can create greater efficiencies in their daily tasks. This paper describes an automation solution that can significantly simplify many complex and routine tasks, freeing Windows experts to focus on overall application functionality and value to the business. This solution is actually in use today within Microsoft s own data center. One Data center Operation that Can Be Radically Simplified Data center operations are complex largely because of application and infrastructure diversity, and the many locations for storing and using scripts and automation process-knowledge in those environments. Choosing the tasks and functions to simplify through automation must be done carefully and with the right tools. For example, one area of data center operations that can yield large efficiency gains through automation is batch processing. Almost every IT group uses some form of batch processing. Batch processes are comprised of many tasks and touch a variety of systems as they execute. Most IT groups use multiple schedulers to drive batch processing in their environment, which inherently creates inefficiencies but is better than no solution at all. Therefore batch processing presents Windows experts a great opportunity for efficiency through simplification. Today, to automate batch processing IT groups use everything from simple scripts and rudimentary scheduling products included in particular point solutions up to more powerful job schedulers. The challenge for many organizations, and therefore the opportunity for efficiency gains, arises out of the fact that each batch processing solution requires its own expertise and each system ends up getting integrated separately and running as a silo, making it impossible for one person to manage the process from end-to-end. To get a clearer picture of this in the Windows world let us take a look at what standard approaches that most Windows administrators use today.
White Paper The Windows Administrator and Batch Processing Automation Windows administrators will be familiar with these Windows-centric ways to automate and the inherent problems: Custom integration by branching from one environment to another, such as calling a SQL script from a batch file using the SQL command line executable, or calling a batch file from a SQL script. This approach uses heavy custom scripting, is difficult to maintain, is difficult to document, and has no clear best-practices. Using Windows Task Scheduler. This tool does not currently handle workflows or complex calendars. Even in the Vista release it will only runs batch files, executables, or send email Scheduling utilities, such as the ones built into SQL Server, MOM, and SMS. These have very limited calendaring abilities, limited job tracking (e.g. status, success, failure) and limited reach in complex, heterogeneous environments. The example approaches above do not simplify the enterprise-wide orchestration of batch processing. In fact, they offer no consistency: the automation method used often depends on the tool of choice for a particular script-writer at a particular time, rather than a planned approach to automation. Furthermore, they offer no native ability for cross application, operating system, domain, or even network boundaries. In fact, Windows-centric automation may have little or no ability at all on non-windows machines. For example, credentials for access to an environment are either stored in clear-text in the script, require user-interaction for automation in that environment, or must be skipped entirely. It is a tradeoff between the security risk of storing clear-text credentials, or depending on humans to run repetitive or iterative tasks. When steps can be automated, the tasks and the logic surrounding execution such as triggers, conditions, and calendars must be custom coded, often for each individual task. Furthermore, task tracking must be customcoded into the tasks themselves, complicating code maintenance. Tracking of run status and success or failure results are required both for orchestration itself as well as compliance reporting. Central storage of task output, if required, must be manually coded and placed into a file system or custom database. Encrypting this often-sensitive data for transit is an advanced development project, so when data is retained, very often it is transmitted and stored insecurely. In summary a variety of inefficiencies, risks and weaknesses are introduced into the overall environment: Reduced security Weakened compliance preparation Reduced reliability and high-availability, which is highly complex for any of these scenarios No way to find bottlenecks and optimize execution Reduced centralization. The bottom line is that integration between IT systems using existing tools must be customcoded or left undone. In addition to a host of risks and weaknesses it also often puts the data center in the position of relying on business users to monitor system health and job status. This is an unreliable and inefficient approach that leads to increased costs.
Automate to Optimize - The Foundation for Data Center Efficiency Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Microsoft Windows The Solution Tidal Software Enterprise Scheduler is a production-grade enterprise scheduler that helps Windows experts fully reap the benefits of enterprise automation by eliminating the inefficiencies described above. Tidal Enterprise Scheduler is tightly integrated with Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and the Windows platform, and still allows you to automate complex and routine tasks in a heterogeneous environment. In addition to being a service platform for business process automation, it can radically simplify infrastructure activities such as backups, system maintenance, and database maintenance tasks like consistency checks and re-indexing tables.
White Paper When evaluating enterprise scheduling products the following four criteria, in addition to support for MOM, must be met in order for Windows experts to benefit: Ease-of-Use The product must be easy to install and simple enough for use by both Tier-1 IT staff and business users. Single-Console Control The product must offer a single console from which to define and manage all of the tasks associated with your most complex automation requirements. Heterogeneous Environment Operability The product must allow you to schedule tasks across various systems from a single console, regardless of what applications and operating environments are involved and regardless of physical location. Task tracking, secure access and credentials storage, output storage, and reporting must seamlessly and intelligently cross environments, applications, and operating systems. Advanced Scheduling Features Nested scheduling to handle dependencies and eliminate manual intervention for a long sequence of tasks Both predefined calendars and unlimited userdefined calendars of any complexity, thereby ensuring speed and flexibility. Calendars must not require scripting Ad hoc, user-dependent job scheduling so that staff can initiate automation as-needed, or react immediately and consistently to urgent issues that need attention, such as task rollback, and clean-up routines Point-of-failure identification so that it is faster to get back on track Remote Web access so staff can view the schedule for any given day from any location Allows for managing jobs by exception. The product should allow staff to interact with the schedule only as-needed for handling problems, freeing them to work on more challenging, critical business issues instead of constantly watching their automation jobs. A comprehensive security model so that role-based security can be easily used to assign staff privileges by duties and prevent missteps and errors. The product should include pre-defined security policy templates and allow customized security policies, with many different levels of privileges within the scheduler. All users should have access to a unified console with security policies simply limiting them to the views they are allowed to see, and the tasks they are allowed to perform.
Automate to Optimize - The Foundation for Data Center Efficiency Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Microsoft Windows In short, a professional, enterprise grade job scheduler used by Windows experts should streamline enterprise-wide as well as focused automation, and reduce the effort and time associated with both complex and routine, repetitive tasks. It should also easily and securely integrate into the diverse application and platform environments that are found today in heterogeneous data centers, or will be found eventually even in today s homogeneous data centers after a merger or acquisition. An enterprise grade automation tool provides a platform to enable agility through automation services: Business users can quickly tap into the available infrastructure and easily create new business process automation, and IT staff can leverage the same service infrastructure to automation IT maintenance. The two can even blend together, optimizing infrastructure and reducing collisions. For instance, once you have end-to-end visibility of automation, you can prevent the conflicts that arise from such things as having a business user trying to close a quarter just as a database administrator is trying to do regular backups or database maintenance on the same database. Windows experts will find that Tidal Enterprise Scheduler scales and can manage dozens to hundreds of thousands of tasks per day. Also key to Windows experts is the fact that Tidal s product eliminates cross-platform complexities because its scalable, distributed architecture works across platforms such as Windows, Unix, Linux, z/os OS/400 and OVMS and seamlessly integrates with leading applications like SAP, PeopleSoft and Oracle E-Business Suite, as well as leading BI solutions and infrastructure technologies like SQL Server and Oracle databases. Tidal s Enterprise Scheduler is used in some of the most demanding data centers in the world, including Microsoft s own data centers. Windows experts will quickly feel comfortable in the Tidal environment with its easy to use graphical user interface and point-and-click operation, tabbed dialog boxes and visual choices for settings and job process definitions. From a single Enterprise Scheduler client console, users can view the processing workload for past, present and future application job executions in real-time, and have a user-friendly interface into cross-environment workloads.
White Paper In conclusion, Tidal Enterprise Scheduler can be the ideal addition to Windows administration. It can radically simplify how experts handle many routine infrastructure tasks, and provides a platform for a service that allows both business users and IT administrators to automate work in the IT environment. For workflows, both complex and simple, reducing the manual effort required increases the flexibility, security and quality of tasks that are handled while reducing the cost of maintaining those tasks. About Tidal Software Tidal Software is a leading provider of application scheduling and performance management software that radically simplifies IT operations by automating and integrating performance and process management. Tidal s solution puts IT operations management into the business process using new levels of automation, visibility, and control over systems. Tidal makes applications such as SAP, PeopleSoft, and Oracle E-business Suite more efficient, reliable, and secure to return greater business value. Tidal also gives IT deep visibility into and precise control over new SOA-based composite solutions consisting of packaged applications and custom components in Java and.net. General Mills, HP, ING Direct, Microsoft and T-Mobile are among the Tidal customers who use Tidal to reduce operational costs by running IT at higher efficiency rates and containing overall data center footprints. Privately held, Tidal is venture-backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Novus Ventures, Panorama Capital, and VantagePoint Venture Partners. For more information, contact Tidal Software at 1-877-55-TIDAL or visit www.tidalsoftware.com.
Corporate Headquarters 2100 Geng Road, Suite 210, Palo Alto, CA 94303 1 (877) 55 TIDAL EMEA Headquarters Tidal Software Limited Siena Court, The Broadway, Maidenhead, SL6 1NJ United Kingdom +44 1628 509 020 +44 1628 509 120 (fax) sales@tidalsoftware.com www.tidalsoftware.com 1006-B 02 08 Tidal Software, Inc. 2008. All rights reserved. Tidal, Tidal Software, and the Tidal Software Logo are trademarks of Tidal Software, Inc. SAP is a registered trademark of SAP AG in Germany and in several other countries. Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, Siebel are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. OS/400, MVS, z/os are registered trademarks of IBM Corporation. Microsoft Operations Manager, MOM, Windows, Microsoft SQL Server and all variations of the Windows product family are trademarks or registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States of America and in several other countries. UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group. HP OpenView and HP OpenVMS are registered trademarks of the Hewlett Packard Company. HP OpenView software contains software from AirMedia, Inc. All other trademarks or registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.