Participating in the school event “Interesting profession of a parent”, my daughter asked me: “Dad, what do you actually do at your work?”. And something what seems is obvious to me, in the first moment. And I realised that in the first moment I could not explain just like that something what seems obvious to me. It’s not so easy to explain in an understandable way to a ten-year-old girl what architecture design, business automation process, virtualization system or the very meaning of the word “deployment” is. What’s more of that to talk about it in an interesting and understandable way in front of so-called “lodge of mockers” what her peers stand for .
After a moment of reflection and analysis of the recent issues I faced, I told her how in the 21st century, we save something that, in my opinion, is the most precious – time. How to reduce the amount of “gray hair” on her colleagues’ parents’ heads by eliminating repetitive activities from their lives
So briefly today by using the example of the INDEVOPS team’s involvement in a relatively simple issue. Let’s take a look at the major monitoring system for infrastructure, services, applications based on the vRealize Aria Operations solution. It has been expanded over the years and now it uses more than 4,000 EP Ops agent instances. Since the 8.4 version supporting only the telelgraph agent, the long-awaited day had come when those several thousand EP Ops objects had to be “upgraded” to Telegraph objects. Unfortunately, with no upgrading access, this meant not only redefining, but also reconfiguring several thousand new objects.
If anyone of you have manually configured Telegraph objects, then you are well aware of the Sisyphean task you need to face. I’ve already seen the enthusiasm of administrators in clicking on the GUI all the objects one by one. We’ve already seen the satisfaction on the faces of executives of quickly executed reconfigurations and maintaining continuity in monitoring. If it’s only a matter of clicking a few up to several objects, once in a while, using the standard interface system can be fun.
However, in a situation when we have to recreate 4000 thousand objects in a short period of time, reconfigure more objects, introduce naming conventions, we are no longer enthusiastic to the manual execution of the constantly repeating activities. What’s worse, human mistake can always occur, which can prolong the process and make it more annoying. And with this number it means about several months of work.
Therefore, we were given a task to complete: Please recreate in the Telegraph agent all HTTP/TCP/ICMP checks, processes and EP Ops services, maintaining the accepted naming convention and continuity of monitoring. Deadline – one month.
We got down to work, as our paramount goal is timeliness, and thus customer satisfaction.
In the first step, an analysis and inventory of all EP ops facilities was performed.
Among other things, we used vrops’ reporting module, which helped us exclude objects that no longer exist or generate errors.
Then our development team, for whom nothing is impossible, developed a configuration tool:
HTTP/TCP/ICMP checks
Linux process
Windows services
It should be mentioned that the solution prepared by us is able to retrieve the current object configuration from the vROPS instance and adapt it to the Telegraf agent configuration template. The administrator, before the final launch, can verify if the data is correctly entered, and if the systems on which the objects will be configured have the Telegraf agent installed.
Each run ends with a summary report listing the objects on which the configuration failed.
Using the tool, the migration process of more than 7,000 objects was completed within 5 days.
Naming standardization has been simplified. And with the simultaneous use of logical grouping rules in the system, objects are automatically assigned to the correct application, environment (production, test), custodian.
Currently, administrators in their daily work actively use the tool when adding more applications to monitoring. Including Telegraf to the monitoring of each successive application reduces the execution time by 50%.
Of course, at my daughter’s school I did not talk about the above example. My speech was a presentation on the use of technology, modern solutions that make our daily life easier and eliminate activities that simply make us people bored by repeating them all the time.
Surprisingly the “lodge of mockers” received my speech with great interest. In the same manner they had many interesting ideas and solutions for eliminating from their lives the everyday activities of going to school and learning.
My day is certainly different from the so-called normal, average work day. I am an INDEVOPS Fellow, a student and swimmer at an American university. Thanks to my passion for the sport, my good swimming performance and my studies, I got the opportunity to go to college in the US and received a scholarship to pay for school.
It’s not an easy road, but thanks to the effort I put in to overcome it I’m successful and can develop myself comprehensively
Each day I have a very heavy workload and I have to stick to the plan to achieve my goal.
My morning training starts at 5:45 a.m. and lasts until 7:30 a.m. As early as 8:00 a.m. I start lectures that last until noon. The learning system in the US is very different from that of Poland. It requires a lot of discipline and your own #organization of work. At 4:45 p.m. it’s time for another workout which lasts until 6:15 p.m. Every other day I also have a gym, which I start at 3:30 p.m. During the season it’s about 20 hours of training a week In the afternoon I have time to take a break and review the tasks that have been received for completion from my #Indevops team. I review what happened in the #company the previous day and start taking action. Thanks to the good management of the whole team, I can do #projects that do not require constant support and constant interaction with clients. However, if some tasks require the help of colleagues, I ask questions in the tasks we collaborate on and have an answer the very next day. The rest of the team can focus 100% on other projects. The only downside is that I don’t have much contact with the #team, as I miss most meetings, e.g., #daily or client meetings due to the 6-hour time difference. On the other hand, on #review and on #planning I try to be so I am up to date and know what to focus on in a given #sprint. I believe that #communication in the team is at a very high level. I can always count on the support of colleagues and quick response. I am glad that I got the opportunity to work in INDEVOPS thanks to this I can develop and support the Polish market. Many people ask me why I don’t want to work in the US. Unfortunately, after 3 years here, I think I don’t fit into the current culture of life and way of working, and I associate my future with Poland.
INDEVOPS is a fast growing company that reached out to me and trained me so that I always have something to come back to when my educational adventure in the United States is over.
How to improve the effectiveness of project implementation and completion? It is simple – give up e-mail communication. Sounds like a heresy? At a first glance it may seem that without e-mails everything will end up in an absolute chaos and the project will fail.
How to reconcile all the stages of service performance, from planning, through programming and testing, to implementation and maintenance? How to make teams communicate effectively and quickly as well as improve their performance instead of reducing it?
Corporate e-mails? No, thanks!
Until recently, specialists taught effective e-mail communication. Arrangements, conditions, plans, discussions, setting tasks and goals – all this in writing, in black and white. This used to be the way. E-mails reigned and were much more convenient than telephone arrangements or notes from meetings. They WERE.
This is a thing of the past. Now it is time to introduce better service and project management systems as well as a new and more effective work methodology. At INDEVOPS, we replaced e-mails and the whole related mess, among others, with Easy Redmine, a project management system. It is a powerful tool which considerably simplified the performance of even the most advanced and complicated services.
The Kanban board allows us to divide each project into single tasks which we perform in a given time (the so-called sprints). We have been testing this product since 2017, and there is virtually no chance for a holdup, somebody failing to receive something or some information about each stage of the project gone missing. This does not happen.
Easy Redmine helps us to visualize tasks within the project on a timeline. We can easily plan, set project milestones and subtasks, assign tasks and add notes to each performance stage. A short glimpse is enough to understand what the project is about and how advanced the works are.
This is what the work based on DevOps methodology and Scrum process looks like. Not only is it agile, but also exceptionally effective for both the development team and the customers.
Endless irritation
We all know that effective communication is in 80% responsible for any successful implementation and even more in providing continuous services. E-mails did not meet our needs. We plunged into chaos.
This was not the way we wanted to serve our customers. After all, knowledge and experience are all part of the success. Available tools which ensure better work performance, safety and transparency also matter. We want to improve our everyday work in order to provide our customers solely with the best quality.
When we analyzed our projects, it was difficult to find the moment when things went wrong. E-mails did not give us such possibility. Our frustration kept growing and this sparked a permanent change. And for the better.
In 2017 we gave up standard communication methods such as e-mails. We use e-mail boxes only for occasional external and customer communication.
Which engine do you invest in at your company?
Particular tools serve as components of our company “engine”. When taken together, they make INDEVOPS a fast, safe and premium class car. You know – better performance, faster acceleration, fewer breakdowns and… lower costs. Nothing but benefits.
On the other hand, you can endlessly invest in repairing old, unreliable methods and wonder why projects contain errors. Sometimes things go lost, or there is a data leak, or somebody does not receive things on time. Costs are growing and the customers are even more frustrated. Is this was we aim at?
Fast or well? Maybe both?
In everyday work we combine carefully selected tools and work methods with our skills, experience and positive approach. This configuration guarantees quick and effective performance of tasks, exchange of knowledge between departments and learning. The perfect communication.
Quick sprint to reach the goal
The Scrum framework is our guidepost. It consists of individual sprints of our teams which resemble a task relay. Each stage is carefully planned and discussed.
Thanks to this approach we are able to complete many tasks at the same time, communicate effectively and quickly solve current problems. It gives us comfort and flexibility to work more effectively and achieve more.
Appropriate project management means an efficient team
Each project includes a set of tasks, and each of the tasks is combined of activities which we list and complete step by step. Classic customer service management methods highly limit communication and creativity. As a consequence, you lose precious time and find it difficult to meet the deadlines as you constantly fight errors and omissions.
In traditional companies one project is usually performed by a single person. If an obstacle appears, they have to ask for help, explain and describe the entire process. It takes time and causes irritation.
INDEVOPS – simply efficient
Such frustration almost never happens here. By using appropriate tools such as Scrum and Easy Redmine, each team member has insight into all tasks, subtasks, milestones, deadlines, explanations, activities and notes, which show our way towards the goal. If needed, they can quickly join the process and help.
We do not waste time on explanations, meetings or calls. Everything is clear and easily available in the form of notes in the project management system. Each team member may follow progress and activities performed on an ongoing basis.
Also the project manager’s task is easier. They do not have to ask such questions like: “What stage are we at? What has already been done and what is to be done yet?”. Everything is updated in the system on an ongoing basis.
It also ensures a more effective customer communication. When they call to ask about the progress of the project, a quick look at the information in the system is enough to find out the answer. This is why we are so effective as INDEVOPS and our customers obtain high-end quality services without wasting their time.
A company that is constantly learning
Thanks to this model of internal communication we constantly learn from each other and exchange experiences at INDEVOPS.
By sending project messages and analyzing each stage of the process, we quickly discover potential errors and failures. In this way we create a pool of good practices and our own solutions.
Solutions not for everyone
Scrum and DevOps offer an effective approach towards project completion, but not for everyone. Open and honest team communication is necessary.
If you inspire a rat race and create an atmosphere of constant competition, these tools will be of no use. Conservative e-mails and formal arrangements will do better. And the competitive spirit will simply prevail over the good of the team and customers. Ultimately, it is the promotion to a higher post that matters the most.
Only real and open team work with people who are able to both share their knowledge and accept criticism constitute conditions under which you may to set ambitious goals. You cannot achieve your greatest goals and dreams on your own. This may happen only in a team.
Tools are not everything (but without tools everything fails).
They help to improve work. They increase safety and automate processes. Shorten the project cycle. But without a knowledgeable and skilled team, they are only tools. They are worthless.
Therefore, at INDEVOPS we care mostly about people. Both the employees and the customers. Before each project we carefully examine the customer’s needs. We try to establish the root cause of the problem. What we offer to our customers are not regular services that are easily available on the market. These are professional solutions which provide measurable business advantages.
The tools are to serve us, but the key aspects are skills, approach and willingness to work in a team. No system or program can replace over 10-years experience and knowledge in IT monitoring and automation that we have.
If you want to check how effective we are, let us know how we can improve your IT activities. Regardless of whether you need monitoring or consider automation. We will be happy to help contact us! >
Access to data on fees for the use of IT systems allows you to answer the question “How much does it cost?”. But with the help of a module, where you can find reports and billing statements, you will also be able to make key decisions about your IT environment. The module will prove equally invaluable when looking for savings, planning a budget or when you want to compare offers from different suppliers.
Why is it worth accounting for costs in IT environments?
The answer to this question is simple. Each participant in the process wants to know how much and for what exactly they are paying. It can be assumed with a high degree of certainty that the question “How much will it cost me?” is going to be raised at some stage of decision making (e.g. budget planning for a new system). It is important to determine at the outset whether migration to a new environment will generate savings for the business.
Cost allocation in IT environments can be considered from two points of view: from the IT infrastructure owner’s standpoint and from the perspective of the end user or the ordering party.
Benefits to owners or suppliers of infrastructure
What will the owner or supplier of IT infrastructure gain thanks to the implementation of the VMware vRealize Operations Manager (vROPS) module and a payment policy in VMware vRealize Automation (vRA)?
The most important benefits include:
Defining a pricing policy flexibly – it can be individually negotiated, while also taking into account the type of application, environment (production, test, development), as well as location.
Options to verify the current pricing policy based on financial performance.
Access to reports which allow you to identify entities generating the highest costs.
If the contractor has access to official price lists of other cloud providers, it is possible to perform comparative simulations for a single application or a given client.
An option to generate reports and statements of charges which can be attached to end-of-month invoices.
Fees for using a virtual machine are automatically determined based on the costs associated with the cloud infrastructure (e.g. for internal entities that use the same infrastructure).
Benefits to end users or purchasing entities
How can a company ordering or using a cloud environment take advantage of access to cost information?
End users can:
make informed decisions on whether to continue using or to opt out of services based on quantified cost and fees data, such as reports and detailed views;
check accounts on an ongoing basis in any time interval, e.g. daily, monthly or yearly;
compare charges over a given billing period, e.g. annually;
estimate its daily or monthly cost when planning a new system;
easily plan the budget for the coming months;
analyse the fees for cloud environment and compare them with the official price lists of other providers;
look for savings on the CPU/Memory/Storage level if it turns out that the current architecture of the environment is overestimated in relation to the actual needs;
easily control expenses at the level of a particular, internal entity or application thanks to constant access to statements of current charges.
How do we do it at INDEVOPS?
Defining a pricing policy
Formulating a pricing policy underlines our operations within vRealize Automation. This is the very policy that enables us to settle entities precisely. It includes rates for CPU/Memory/Storage and any additional services (such as the use of licenses or IT support).
In the case of complex systems with very large budgets, an approval of senior management is often required on the part of the client. In such situations, we define a pricing policy which subjects the deployment of a new system to its price.
Cost dashboards for infrastructure owners
We utilise vRealize Operations Manager as a cost, reporting and billing module. All expenses that the owner of cloud infrastructure incurs in connection with its maintenance are entered into the cost module. These may include licence purchases, charges for electricity used e.g. for cooling servers, insurance, IT support services, purchasing software and additional applications, creating backups, renting space in the server room, etc.
The reports we prepare contain a summary of costs per single virtual machine, host, cluster, data center or location. Service providers can quickly see what the profit-to-cost ratio is, which allows them to measure and analyse business profitability and make informed decisions about further investments.
Billing information for final users
Final customers using the vROPS module have access to statements where they can check the current amount of fees on an ongoing basis. In this module, they can also view the number of systems currently running, along with the costs generated by them.
Billing statements are also very helpful when systems have been overestimated at the design stage and savings are required. The module gives end customers access to historical data, thanks to which they can compare charges from different settlement periods.
This part of the module also includes official price lists of the largest cloud providers operating on the market, such as Amazon (AWS), Microsoft (Azure), Google (GCP) – this is a valuable source of information for people who want to compare service offers.
Do you already know why allocating costs to virtual machines is one of the most important aspects of IT automation? If you have any questions about it, please get in touch.
A company without IT has no chance of development – it is supported both by simple solutions such as cash registers and extensive infrastructures with an international reach. However, development means an increase in the amount of tasks related to IT maintenance. Check how to replace manual work with automatic tools that will give your company new development opportunities.
Is it the right time to implement automation in your company?
In the growth of any organization, there comes a point when manually operating systems becomes too time-consuming.
Single simple but tedious tasks are not a big problem for administrators. However, if they start doing this work for dozens or hundreds of employees, it may turn out that they lack the time for implementations that allows the company to grow.
Your company is planning to introduce new products or increase employment? This is a good time to select areas that can undergo IT automation.
From tedious work to one click – how does automation improve the work of IT administrators?
Administrators spend a large part of their time managing employee accounts. Setting up such an account requires a number of steps: logging into many websites, e.g. to an internal account database, teleconference or chat services, e-mail, training platforms, and a platform for supporting benefit cards.
Increasing the disk capacity for the application server can also be such a time-consuming task. The administrator must log in to the virtualizer, manually increase the disk capacity, log in to the virtual machine separately, and then enter the command appropriate for the operating system.
What does the performance of these tasks look like once automation has been implemented in the company? From the administrator’s side, it only requires clicking the “Submit” button. All the work they had to do manually until now is done somewhat behind the scenes, based on predefined procedures.
Use automation where you need it
Looking to streamline processes in your company? Here are some examples from different areas:
IT support – providing virtual desktops without manual intervention – help for employees who are not technically advanced.
Information flow in the company – introduction of the approval system: the order of goods is prepared by the warehouse worker, but to be placed, it must be approved by the manager. The decision-maker no longer has to define the parameters on his/her own – they are loaded from the prepared order.
Creating a “world management center”, i.e. a common interface – such a solution makes it easier to use different environments, for example when configuring virtual machines at different cloud service providers.
Placing orders – automatic systems allow you to order goods from suppliers who currently offer them at the lowest price.
Discover the benefits of IT automation for your company
By automating IT processes, you free up corporate resources – Your administrators can focus on implementing innovations, instead of spending the lion’s share of their work on performing other simple and repetitive activities. IT automation is also a way to optimize costs – the current team is enough to operate IT systems, without the need to appoint additional human resources.
By using tools that replace the manual work of your IT team, you can also ensure consistent standards across the company. Then you avoid, for example, problems with missing accounts for employees or differences in partition format on virtual machines.
Check how we remove obstacles to development by implementing automation tools. Contact us and we will present our solutions to you!
During a time when some lived in a barrel and were creating a school of cynicism (Diogenes of Sinope), others made first attempts to define what is knowledge (Plato, Socrates). Long over 2000 years later, as a result of many extensive deliberations by other wise men of this world, it was concluded that knowledge is a whole of reliable information about reality along with the ability to use it. For business, knowledge means profit.
“Learn and learn because education is a key to power”- the provocative polish adage that our guardians used to say, that is still a nightmare for some of us from our childhood leaves no doubt. Accumulation and skillful usage of knowledge pays off. Knowledge is the most valuable human asset and it’s important (not only for our guardians but for ourselves as well) to systematize, document and nurture. Every day there are situations in which there is a strong need to learn something new, obtain reliable information, broaden horizons and take advantage of the knowledge and experience of others.
Sources of knowledge
In the age of the internet where in a second users of the global network have access to knowledge that a medieval man would not achieve through his whole life. Sources of knowledge, i.e. documentation, blogs, reports, dedicated websites, and reference websites such as Wikipedia, are available at your fingertips (thanks to smartphones, tablets, and notebooks). Unfortunately, too often the quality and content of easily accessible knowledge are too poor to rely on.
However, looking for it in different places can be time-consuming and often doesn’t bring desired results. What can we do in such a situation? We can, and even we should create our own knowledge base. As its owners, we can confirm that maintaining our own knowledge base is a key to fast providing value and solutions to customers, which results in profits.
Knowledge as team’s shared resource
Imagine a situation where your employee disappears. His project has been completed and closed, all the ways have been paved. Or even worse – the project hits a dead-end and requires a reaction. What do you do? You check emails! Millions of emails, first yours… then your employee… well, it didn’t help.
Now you start calling! You make long calls to people who are involved and ask for status. That didn’t help either. What now? You delegate the task! Perhaps someone else will be more efficient. It might help, but how long will it take? Tomorrow, that relegated employee might disappear as well. How much time and stress does it cost you?
What if you could collect all of your team’s knowledge in such a way that all of your employees can have access to information gathered by other team members? All of the tasks’ statuses in one place, with full access to the team’s knowledge from their desktops. It’s possible!
Your own knowledge base will allow you to:
Save your time – so you can focus on a task, and not on searching and verifying information
Improve communication between team members – so everyone can share their knowledge and benefit from the experience of others
Standardization of processes – so you can easily onboard new employees and so your company can grow
Increase the quality of the service and advantage over the competitors – so everyone can make profit from solutions applied earlier and carry out tasks better and faster
Proven solution
It’s called Easy Redmine. it’s our investment in peace and guarantee of efficient information flow. We have been using this tool for many years now for our own knowledge base. It’s an invaluable experience which in a systematic and standardized manner allows the realization of new projects based on previous ones in accordance with the best practice.
Our knowledge base is automatically created during every task. If at that point there are substantial or organizational scope errors they are easily detectable and the potential cost of repairs is the lowest possible. Basically, thanks to updating and archiving the task every new employee is able to take over the task much faster than if he had done it by himself from the beginning.
Sharing knowledge, cooperation, and shared responsibility, but also a good organization of our own work are the four most important foundations of Indevops.
Work with specialists who use knowledge base to guaranteestandardisation of set-up as well as swift implementation of your projects so you don’t have to worry about their progress!
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Please recreate in the Telegraph agent all HTTP/TCP/ICMP checks, processes and EP Ops services, maintaining the accepted naming convention and continuity of monitoring. Deadline – one month.
