As data centers become more and more complex —encompassing applications, networking devices and virtual and physical servers —many IT organizations are implementing critical service management systems. However, implementing and managing these diverse systems to support network service management processes— such as event and incident management, change management, and disaster recovery tasks— often results in manually coordinated hand‑offs, adding significant risk to service availability. Multiple teams are involved in the process, which makes very tedious and time-consuming.
To stay ahead of the digital transformation curve, many organizations find the solution lies in network automation. In fact, the adoption of automation is nothing new and is continuing to proliferate in this digital age. But, challenges inevitably arise when multiple automation tools are utilized by different teams within the same enterprise.
Luckily, there’s a better way. The most efficient solution takes automation a step further is “automation workflow.” By utilizing these workflows, an enterprise can streamline the automation of all network and application services to create a more efficient, cohesive solution.
What is an automation workflow?
An automation workflow defines a logical flow of activities or tasks needed to deliver a service from start to finish. The activities in the workflow can be executed sequentially or in parallel with interleaving decision points. Creating an automation workflow is an easy way to streamline and standardize application deployment, which can often be a tedious, lengthy and convoluted process involving multiple technologies and teams.
The AppViewX Solution: Visual Workflow
AppViewX’s Visual Workflow tool provides an intuitive system for designing self-serviceable, event-driven, intelligent and automation workflows. It enables operational agility and service efficiency in the various stages of network and application service delivery. It helps to accelerate time-to-value by providing everything needed for the complete out-of-the-box automation of application delivery network infrastructure.
AppViewX provides prepackaged automation workflows to address various application deployment scenarios faster and with more efficiency. Some standard automation workflows are available in the AppViewX GitHub community which are available to users with an AppViewX instance in their environment.
Use Case 1: Automate Application Provisioning on ADCs
ADC infrastructure is very complex and dynamic. To overcome ADC service delivery delays, AppViewX offers three automation workflows that can be used to create, modify or delete a virtual server. The Create Virtual Server RI creates a virtual server and associates it with the appropriate profiles, monitors, pools, and pool members in F5 BIG-IP LTM, all using Infoblox and ServiceNow integration.
See in Action
Use Case 2: Zero-Touch Provisioning of a new F5 BIG-IP Virtual Edition
To host a new application, the network team must instantiate a new F5 BIG-IP hypervisor or cloud. Usually this request takes three weeks as the workload is spread across different teams. The Zero-Touch Provisioning of BIG-IP VE RI is used to perform the complete automation of BIG-IP VE provisioning.
See in Action
- User Guide: Zero-Touch Provisioning of BIG-IP VE
- Import from here
To get a better idea of how automation workflows work, download the new white paper, Automation Workflows: Rethinking Service Management to Accelerate Network and Application Service Delivery.