Orchestration

Hi readers. Here I am back again with some interesting facts about automation.  Let’s have a look on the topics that we have discussed in the last blog. In the last blog we have discussed about various ways of doing automation. On that we have learned about some basics of the orchestration, programming language and scripting language.

Now today we are going to learn about orchestration in details.

So here we are talking about the generic term – orchestration and orchestrator.

What is orchestration and orchestrator?

Orchestration is the automated arrangement, coordination, and management of computer systems, middleware, and services.

Now let’s go through an example to understand the same in a proper way.

As we have discussed previously also, orchestrator is used to designed flows and that same flows can be triggered. Once the flows will get triggered, it is start progressing as the flow is designed. For example, if you want to create an user in your domain then the process goes as follows:

So here the same flow we can design in orchestrator also.

Normally orchestrators will have:

Workflow Engine

Repository

Web Server

Flow processor

So we will design the flow in the workflow designer. Once that is designed, it will be stored in the repository. Whenever we need to trigger the flow, we can fetch the flow form the repos and trigger the same. Once all the necessary inputs are given, the flow will continue as per the designed steps and complete the tasks in seconds like magic.

Normally the orchestrators can be accessed from the workflow designer as well as through web service also. So to access that from web service, we need the web service to be always up and running.

Once the flow is completed, it will intimate the user and it will quit.

The task, that the orchestrators does, are knows as orchestration.

TYPES:

There are many orchestrators available in market. But among them some are mostly used and the names are as follows:

HPOO

SNOW (Service Now)

Vcentre

Scorch

Among those, SNOW is cloud based. All the data used for SNOW are being stored in cloud.

HPOO is manufactured by HP. This is a client environment based orchestrator. The Scorch and VCentre are also as same as HPOO. The main difference is HPOO is mainly used for UNIX automation where Scorch is used for Windows automation and VCentre is made by VMWare so it is mostly used for Virtual System Automation.

That was the generic details about orchestrators. In our next blogs we will discuss about all the orchestrators (Mainly SNOW and HPOO).

Keep reading my blogs. for more information and please do post comments for any query or feedback.

You can drop mail in anik.raj004@gmail.com.

The next blog will be coming soon (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday).  Thanks for reading.

HOW TO DO AUTOMATION (Basics...)

Hi dear Readers

This is Anik again with some more information about automation.

As last week we have discussed about the basic concept of automation. This time we are going to learn about several ways of automation and their basic concept. This topics will be discussed in a broader way in upcoming blogs.

Now there are several ways to do automation. Some of the things, that I prefer, I have mentioned below:

1.    Orchestration

2.    Programming in Application Level

3.    Scripting in Operating System Level

Now here I am going to explain about the above mentioned points.

1. Orchestration:

 

  

    So here the first questions comes is what is orchestration and how do we use that for automating IT processes. Orchestration is all about designing work flow and executing that with some proper guide lines. a work flow defines the process flow on any operation in a flow-chart format. 

    To explain in normal terms let me continue with an example. How do you write a mail? First you login to the account, then click on compose, then type the recipient name. Next put the subject and then type the body. At last you will send the mail. Now this whole thing can be designed in a flow as follows:

    Whatever tasks we do, all can be designed using a work flow. Once the workflow is designed, by deploying that in a Orchestrator, the whole thing can be automated.

    There are some very famous orchestrators in market like HPOO, SNOW etc.

2. Programming in Application Level:

  The programming languages are some high level language that communicate directly with the application core codes. Once the program is executed, it starts interacting with the main target application code and gets the work done.

    That was a technical explanation. Now let’s make it easier. Let’s go with an example. We all use Microsoft Office. When someone clicks on word or excel, what actually we do is, we execute a background code that has been already deployed by the time of MS Office installation. Programming languages interact with that background code and make the work done. But the difference is, normally we have to operate the whole operation by ourselves manually but if we use a piece of code, then that will have the AI(Artificial Intelligence) to identify the status of the application and do the next step to fulfil our requirement.

    There are some very good programming languages available in market but the most I like is Autoit. That is mainly a GUI automation language. We will discuss the languages in the upcoming blogs. Other than that a very well-known language is SAP ABAP.

3. Scripting in Operating System Level:

    Scripting languages are also similar as programming languages but the main difference is these languages can also interact with the Operating System directly. We can automate OS (Operating System) level operations by scripting languages.

    Again it is the example time. Let’s think about a feature of windows that we all have used. Yes, Notepad. So what happens when we launch notepad. The OS generates a backend command and executes the same. That commands finds the notepad.exe file in the system and triggers that. Now with the help of scripting languages, we can automate this kind of OS level jobs as well.

   Some good scripting languages are Python, autoit (can work as both scripting and programming language), javascript, vbscript etc.

These are the most suitable ways to do automation. But there are many other ways too. We will discuss about the same as the day progress.

Keep reading the blogs for more information and please do post comments for any query or feedback.

You can drop mail in anik.raj004@gmail.com.

The next blog will be coming soon (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday).  Thanks for reading.

Automation, the coolest stuff ever

Hi Dear Readers.

This is Anik and this blog is all about the basic understanding of Automation. I am a very passionate technical person who develops software and tools in a well reputed company for other client companies but today I am here to share my views about automation and let the readers know about it and to help them to accept it with a broad heart and mind.

Days are changed now. Previously people use to send letters by pigeon but now it’s all about emails and text messages. Even for latest messaging apps you don’t need to store your messages and data in the cloud server. It will be in your laptop or phone. When I was a kid, I used to use a PC that has 512 MB RAM and I was quite happy with that. It was faster, quite smooth to work and most important I was able to play all my games very easily. Now if I give a kid a gadget with 512 MB RAMS, he/she will like to throw it out of the window. Now even phones are having 4 GB RAMS. No one talks in MBs anymore.

What I meant to say is that, as the day progress, the technologies are changing. I am a person who likes to try all those techs but at the end of the day, it force me to think about the manual intervention that I put to use that. From the very beginning of my career I like see myself simply sitting in the sofa and all my tasks are getting completed like magic. It seems quite impossible right? I also thought the same but then I get to know about the coolest stuff ever. That’s where automation pitches in.

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Now let’s talk about Automation. What is automation? Let’s make it quite simple with a real life example. You wake up in the morning and you remember that you need to book a hall for today’s meeting with the leaders or you need to book a restaurant for today’s dating lunch. But at the same time, you are very late for office. That pending work is going to take at least 15 minutes but you want it to finish just in one click. So there comes automation. Now it is very much possible to do those jobs just within just and just one click. Sometime it does not require any attention of your as it can be scheduled previously.

Every day when I wake up, I just turn my computer on and play some good music. Now I don’t want to invest my time to turn it off while I am leaving for office. When I am back to home, I like to use social networking but I don’t want to open the browser and log in and other stuffs. I want to make it happen with just one click as usual. As soon as I download any good movie or latest episode of “Game of Thrones”, I just put it in my hard drive just like that. But when the time comes to play that I used to suffer to find it. But now I have something that makes all those sorting and put those in separate folders with just… Yes, with just one click. These are very small example of automation. There are many more that can be automation.

Now there are many ways to automate such tasks. There are some apps in market that will help you to complete some of your tasks automatically but I don’t prefer to use those because that costs me some bucks. So what I do is write the codes by myself. You can say that I am too passionate about the automation stuffs. So I just keep on doing something or the other.

Now I feel like I need to share those stuffs with others too. This is my first blog so it may not be that impressive but as the day progresses you will find it more interesting. Let’s get back to track. Automation is the upcoming trend in the market.

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As I said, I work as an automation engineer in a company and I develop software that helps my client companies to handle their daily jobs in a smoother way. So I thought of developing some apps for normal people use. In my next blogs we will discuss about some technologies that I personally prefer to use for building those cool stuffs but before that I would like to know from your prospective that, what are the daily job that you would like to see automated to reduce your work load. That may be some official tasks or for personal use. That does not matter.

My next post will appear soon (Wednesday, Friday and Sunday). Thanks for reading.

For more information, please contact me on anik.raj004@gmail.com.

Please feel free to share your comments.