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.
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.
How many websites do you use? In how many banks do you have an account?
Do you have the same password everywhere?
Where do you keep your passwords: on a piece of paper by your monitor, in a notebook, in a text file?
Aren’t you afraid of your bank account or a dating site being hacked?
We often hear about data leaks, accounts being hacked or users’ passwords databases being exposed online.
Reports on this industry websites that promote safety:
You probably use at least a dozen or even several dozen websites and you may not even remember how many there are. In most of them you have the same, or slightly different, password set. You haven’t changed it for a long time. Your passwords are uncomplicated, i.e. Pawel@1969 or Blok@da123. Additionally, some of them probably concern your company’s services.
What is it if not asking for problems that may or may not have very serious consequences? Especially in the case of companies or organisations where you have access to applications that contain very sensitive data.
How can you protect yourself against this?
The simplest solution is to use a password manager, which is available free of charge for users.
A good password manager has the following features:
encrypts the password database with your password to log in to the site (changing your password re-encrypts the password database, but losing the password makes passwords unrecoverable),
downloads the encrypted password database locally to your device,
has applications for Windows PC, Linux, MacOS and also for Android and iOS phones,
allows you to test your password database for data leaks on websites e.g. https://haveibeenpwned.com/,
allows you to test passwords in the database in terms of their strength so that you can correct it,
has a strong password generator,
has add-ons and applications that automatically fill in login fields for applications and websites without the need to copy and enter them manually
Using Password Manager has only benefits:
guarantees that you don’t have to remember many passwords,
you only remember one complicated password, which you do not share with anyone,
generates passwords that are not easy to guess,
does not require entering a password, so peeking at the keyboard while logging in does nothing
We have been using Password Manager ourselves since the beginning of the company, and we make sure that all passwords are generated strong. We keep both our and our clients’ passwords, and periodically verify that they are strong and haven’t been stolen.
Of course, there are other mechanisms for ensuring secure access to accounts, such as using Social Media Logins or advanced Privileged Identity Management solutions, but that’s another topic.
vFORUM is a cult event organised by Vmware and Dell EMC in Poland and worldwide.
On October 30, at DoubleTree Hilton in Warsaw, workshops and lectures were held, led by the best specialists on the market in such areas as Network & Security, Digital Transformation and Modern and Agile Data Center. The special guests were, among others Richard Bennett (VMware) Dariusz Piotrowski (DELL EMC) and Roman Polko (GROM).
All vFORUM participants had the opportunity to take part in technical workshops on the subject of digital business transformation, meet industry experts and exchange their experiences with other conference participants!
IINDEVOPS was present at the panel ‘Intelligent mathematical algorithms in the service of monitoring applications, services, and infrastructure’, led by Paweł Orzechowski (CTO, Indevops) and Przemysław Tomaszewski (Systems Engineer, Vmware).
Speakers for over an hour lectured about monitoring, analysing and predicting behaviours and failures in the entire IT environment using the vRealize Operations tools: from hardware to applications, in the Data Center and the cloud, connections and dependencies between objects, and insight into structural and nonstructural data. And even though DEMO didn’t go so well for us, there was no end to discussions and questions.
Round of applause for these gentlemen!
‘Digital transformation is not a fashion that’ll pass. It’s a training plan for business muscles.’
GLOBAL LEGAL HACKATHON is a two-day, law-related, programming marathon organised by Wolters Kluwer, the 2nd edition of which took place this year at the Google Campus in Warsaw.
The purpose of this event was to develop innovative technological and business solutions that would be helpful both for lawyers and people seeking legal assistance.
The participants were lawyers, programmers, graphic designers, project managers, and business analysts. Specialists in their field worked in interdisciplinary teams, which favoured the creative process, providing broader experience and a new perspective.
Aleksander Jabłoński and Maciej Maślanka as the team ‘High Five’ took part in the event on behalf of INDEVOPS. Within 52 hours – from the idea, through the prototype, business model and testing the competitive advantage on the solution market – they created a ‘Personalized Notification System‘.
Changes are the most frequently mentioned problem by entrepreneurs and lawyers, which may have a huge and negative impact on their companies. The work of our programmers informs entrepreneurs about legal, economic, political, and economical changes that came into force or coming.
We received a high distinction and great applause from all participants. We’re making plans for New York next year!!
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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.
