Skip to main content

Datacenter automation status

Over the last week, I have been testing the CA Server management and CMDB product, as well as Bladelogic. Both products are good, but have their downsides. I am evaluating 4 products, and narrowing it down to 2 in order to deploy on a real QA/staging environment. The criteria we are testing on are as follows, each has a weight as well. More later:

Requirement Sub-Feature
Network Option
Track network device configuration
Create policy for configuration standards
CMDB
Visualize relationships between servers
Visualize relationships between server and network
Track dependencies of servers and websites
Software Deployment
Support for MSI, RPM, and Sun Packages
GUI for creating Packages
Search and replace
Reverse engineer files into packages
Rollback
Notifications via SNMP and SMTP
Download patches, deploy, and rollback patches
Create a policy of patches
Hardware asset collection
Collect data via DMI
Collect detailed information
Software asset collection
Collect software revision and install details
Collect how often and for how long software is used
Reporting capability
Export to PDF,XLS
Report on compliance, changes, and activity
Open database with views that make it easy to query
Multiple Datacenter capability
Ability to have proxies in datacenters/envs
Ability to have decentralized control over envs
PXE deployment
Provision OS and policy in one job
Monitor and track configuration/policy
Create policy off Live including patches and settings
Track compliance to the policy
Enforce the policy
Track changes made outside the product
Prevent the execution of a specific exe or file
Manage users and services
Manage local users across servers
Replicate credentials to other servers
Manage services in real-time
Verify status of services in real-time across servers
Verify services port usage
Usability
How easy is the product to administrate
How easy is the product to use
How easy is the product to configure and setup

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Dynatrace Growth Misinformation

For my valued readers: I wanted to point out some issues I’ve recently seen in the public domain. As a Gartner analyst, I heard many claims about 200% growth, and all kind of data points which have little basis in fact. When those vendors are asked what actual numbers they are basing those growth claims on, often the questions are dodged. Dynatrace, recently used the Gartner name and brand in a press release. In Its First Year as an Independent Company, Gartner Ranks Dynatrace #1 in APM Market http://www.prweb.com/releases/2015/06/prweb12773790.htm I want to clarify the issues in their statements based on the actual Gartner facts published by Gartner in its Market Share data: Dynatrace says in their press release: “expand globally with more than three times the revenue of other new generation APM vendors” First, let’s look at how new the various technologies are: Dynatrace Data Center RUM (DCRUM) is based on the Adlex technology acquired in 2005, but was cr...

Misunderstanding "Open Tracing" for the Enterprise

When first hearing of the OpenTracing project in 2016 there was excitement, finally an open standard for tracing. First, what is a trace? A trace is following a transaction from different services to build an end to end picture. The latency of each transaction segment is captured to determine which is slow, or causing performance issues. The trace may also include metadata such as metrics and logs, more on that later. Great, so if this is open this will solve all interoperability issues we have, and allow me to use multiple APM and tracing tools at once? It will help avoid vendor or project lock-in, unlock cloud services which are opaque or invisible? Nope! Why not? Today there are so many different implementations of tracing providing end to end transaction monitoring, and the reason why is that each project or vendor has different capabilities and use cases for the traces. Most tool users don't need to know the implementation details, but when manually instrumenting wi...

IBM Pulse 2008 - Review

I spent Monday-Wednesday at IBM Pulse in Orlando. It was a good show, but quite a few of the sessions were full when I arrived. It was frustrating because they didn't offer them more than once. The morning sessions were mostly pie in the sky, and not very useful to me. I got to spend a lot of time with senior people in engineering, architecture, and acquisitions/strategy. I also got to meet people I knew from online or other dealings with IBM. Overall, the show was a good use of my time, and I found it enjoyable. Here are some of my highlights: ITM 6.2.1 improvements including agentless capabilities and such. New reporting framework based on BIRT which will be rolling forward. New UI which is being pushed and was on display from TBSM 4.2. Hearing about what other customers are up to (mostly bad decisions from what I've seen). Affirmation of ITNM (Precision) as a best of breed tool, with a excellent roadmap. Some things which are bad and make no sense: Focus on manufactur...