Private and Confidential

                                                

ThinkControl & ProLiant Essentials

Rapid Deployment Pack

Private and Confidential

                                                

ThinkControl Architecture (High Level)

Private and Confidential

                                                

Workflows

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What, Why and How?

What is a Workflow?• A workflow is the sequence of steps a system administrator would use to

accomplish a task. • Workflows can make use of existing native technologies and scripts already in

your datacenter.

Why use Workflows?• Repeatable, error-free execution which can help reduce fire fighting and

overtime costs. • Allows your highly valued system administrators to work on enhancing

processes instead of troubleshooting configuration issues. • Allows your system administrators to be strategic instead of tactical.

How do I create a Workflow?• 1st step- map out your process flow• Modify an existing or create your own workflows using the ThinkControl GUI.• Run the workflow

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More Detail

• Workflows allow for standard Input, standard output and standard error.

• Workflows are typically built around a smaller component called a Java Driver. These are essentially hardware and software drivers with input parameters. (e.g. load balancer IP address, service name, etc).

• Each step in a workflow requires input from a previous step in a workflow, in essence it is similar to a scripting language but when combined with a policy engine it allows you to meet business objectives.

• At any step in a workflow you can:– Invoke a java driver to control a hardware device or software element

– Invoke another workflow

– In the event of a failure in any step rollback or execute a recovery path

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Workflows are re-usable!

• A central component to Think Control is the Data Center Model (DCM) where all physical and logical assets are modeled. Workflows make use of the DCM to allow for an abstraction of both physical and logical operations.

• Workflows can be designed to be generic so that once created, a single workflow can be used for more than one purpose. For example, one could create a “Add server to application” workflow that can be invoked to apply to Windows 2000, Linux, and Solaris environments.

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Other capabilities

• 300+ predefined workflows• Nestable- can embed one or more workflows into

another• Use of existing scripts• Backout or recovery from failure • Verification and audit capability• Ability to interface to any command line interface or

API of other products

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ThinkControl and the

HP Rapid Deployment Pack

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HP Lab with ThinkControl

Inte

l Poo

l

MGMT

F5 BigIP

122

123

124

122 123

124

CISCO 3548 XL

1.1

802.1q

VIP1:WebClusterVIP2:MediaCluster

ThinkControl

ThinkControlDatabase

BootServer(Altiris)

1.2

Intel Pool

IIS WebCluster

MediaStreamingCluster

Load Generators

Compaq Think Control Lab

17

2.1

6.1

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Sw

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172.16.122.4 172.16.124.4

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Private and Confidential

                                                

Rapid Deployment Pack (RDP)

Integration Demo

Objective: Automatically scale a video streaming application when bandwidth on NIC reaches > 60% utilization.

• ThinkControl’s Domain:

• Create and enforce the policy

• Monitor the devices

• Trigger the PXE provisioning at the OS level through RDP

• Wait till finished

• Install the application level software

• Start software service and ensure running

• Update RDP of new server status

ThinkControl RDPAltiris

Smartstart

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RDP Integration

• Using RDP command line interface (axsched) to trigger OS deployment.• Because RDP’s command line interface was Asynchronous needed to wait for status.• Update RDP on server move from resource pool to application.

• Implication: Can use RDP and associated functionality to cover larger scope of System Administration tasks.

ThinkControl RDPAltiris

Smartstart

Update RDP

OS deploy RequestUsing CLI

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ThinkControl RDP Integration

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End