1. Process Automation Brannan Matherson Product Marketing Manager Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft Virtual Academy
Welcome to Microsoft Virtual Academy. I am Brannan Matherson and I am a Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft focused on the Windows Server Systems Center and Azure Datacenter Solutions Team focused on how we actually deploy and provide a holistic Datacenter solution and manager environment within IT.
Thus far, I am inside the automation self-service session and currently we are going to be talking about system automation and this is where we are going to take advantage of the depth and insight into Orchestrator Automation which allows us to be able to create workflows, or we call them Runbooks to kick off processes and activities that we typically have done manually in the past, but now we want to bring to life all the richness with automation so let’s dig into what does this look like from an automation perspective.

2. What is Process automation and Why
System Center Marketing
11/21/2018
What is Process automation and Why
Process automation
Automate the service processes and systems necessary to the fulfillment of consumer requests
Automate routing of requests for approval and notification
Automate provisioning of the service request
Automation provides
resources that are provisioned the same way every time
processes that enable requests and provisioning through self-service
a reduction of error-prone manual tasks to lower costs
CMDB information to identify systemic issues so they can be quickly addressed and remediated
efficiencies that enable IT resources to focus on work that adds business value
Runbooks
Moving forward, let’s think about the concept of process automation, using processes built on our IT our ITIL methodologies to be able to deliver that service and build that into how our components are going to execute on those tasks and those processes that are going to occur. One of the things that we want to first answer is, what is the process automation and why does this matter? Why is this important?
First off, process automation is all about the requests, the approvals and the fulfillments of processes. Then, taking that richness that we have built into the CMDB or the configuration management database where we have thought about, what is our incident processes? Our change processes? Our release processes? Or even our SLAs because that is important. IT is measured by how quickly we deliver the services to meet the needs of our end users or our business units. We want to take advantage of those automated processes and build that into Orchestrator via Runbooks. The Runbooks are going to provide a way for those resources to be provisioned the same way every time. That repeated fashion is critical, it is key, for activity to become more efficient. We want those processes to enable requests and provisioning through self-service. Self-service is how our end users feel empowered to ask IT for the necessary services and know that they will be delivered on time and they will be to their specs or their requirements. We want to take advantage of the CMDB information and identify where we may have systemic issues or problems within the environment as well so that is something that we want to pay attention to.
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

3. Selecting Tasks for Automation
11/21/ :43 PM
Selecting Tasks for Automation
Which processes are the most time-consuming?
Where are service levels suffering the most?
Which problems recur most frequently?
Which are most expensive for the company?
Which process failures are visible to customers?
One of the things that we want to do, first and foremost is, select the task that we want to automate and why do we want to automate them? Why is it important? What are the challenges that we are seeing? Which processes are the most time consuming? Start there. That is where I will be able to think about, where is my staff spending time doing the same thing over and over again where I can best use their expertise elsewhere. What are the service levels that are suffering the most? Why am I not meeting my SLAs because I may be introducing some errors or I may be spending more time than I need to, to provision a resource because I need to manually go through a number of different systems. Which problems seem to happen the most? That is a big one. The things that are happening all the time, I want to capture that information. I want to identify a fix for that information and apply that same fix every time it occurs so that now I can take advantage of those repeatable tasks and reduce errors and reduce time and increase my productivity for my end users. I want to understand which are the most expensive solutions or expensive services for my enterprise that I am delivering back to the business. I want to identify what those are so that I can reduce the time and get a better RY on those particular investments. I then want to understand which failures, which processes are failing the most that are visible to my end users.
Errors that are visible to end users can cause significant problems and perception upon how IT delivers services and it builds confidence and excitement for end users to be able to depend on IT more effectively.
© 2013 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries. The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

4. Service Delivery and Automation Architecture
System Center Marketing
11/21/2018
Service Delivery and Automation Architecture
Release management
Change
management
Self-service
Reporting and insights
Incident management
Process automation
CMDB
Work items
Configuration items
Knowledge
Service catalog
Workflows
Templates
Data warehousing
Orchestrator
Automation
Let’s look at a basic architecture for what service delivery and automation looks like across the enterprise. This is how we envision this process occurring. You will notice we think about release management, change management, a self-service experience, reporting and insights and that is something that we will dig into a lot more within the IT service management session that we have as a capability within System Center. Then, the incident management piece.
We see the process automation and that is where we are taking advantage of our service catalog and our workflows, bringing that together, putting that into the scene and taking advantage of that within the CMDB in terms of work items and configuration items and that knowledge base.
We then want to take advantage of the templates that we have built to be able to deliver that service and that template applies to the request offerings or the service offerings that we have seen within the environment.
Then we have our data warehousing which is basically the data warehouse or the database itself for how we store this information and call upon it as we need to when we think about reporting and insights. This can all be done within the Orchestrator automation component at this Orchestrator level.
Integration is where I now think about, how do I start to bring in activities that I do in other systems? Not just Service Manager. Not just Orchestrator, but the rest of the System Center Suite. Preconfigured or predefined steps in virtual machine manager. Building out or provisioning the infrastructure. Steps that I want to do in terms of monitoring. Where am I getting my monitoring data and where do I need to identify when alerts are thrown using Ops Manager. I want to think about Data Protection Manager. I want to think about active directory and the information that I am getting from Windows Server and then, of course, we understand that there are mixed environments out there that may take advantage of third party tools. We may think about, what are we doing with HP or you may use BMC in your environment. We want you to take advantage of those assets that you have already invested in and use them within this architecture here to take advantage of an automated experience to deliver those services.
Integration
Active Directory
Third-party
management tools
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION. 4

5. Process Automation Simplifies Datacenter Management
Standardize Processes
Optimize and extend existing investments
Deliver flexible and reliable services
Lower costs and improve predictability + + =
Processes
Consistent, standardized processes from Service Manager
Centralized CMDB
Integration
Optimize heterogeneous environments with integration packs
Easy-to-extend platform for building custom integrations with the integration toolkit
Orchestration
Accelerate time to value with flexible process workflows
Improve service reliability across multiple tools, systems, and department silos
Automation
Enable IT resources to focus on work that adds business value
Reduce error-prone manual activities while lowering costs
Process automation is all about simplifying Datacenter Management. That is the primary thing that we want to do. We want to standardize those processes. We want to optimize and extend those existing investments. We want to deliver flexible and reliable services and then we want to make sure that we lower costs and improve predictability. It is all about knowing exactly what is going to be delivered, how it is going to be delivered and when it is going to be delivered. Those processes are alignment sitting within the CMDB and within Service Manager. That integration piece is all about taking Orchestrator and optimizing heterogeneous environments with integration packs or extensibility and using PowerShell when integration packs may not meet the needs and then the Orchestration in terms of plugging together all of those workflows in a way that we can now take advantage of that information.
Processes, integration, orchestration leads to an automation solution that reduces costs and reduces errors.

6. Value of a centralized CMDB
System Center Marketing
11/21/2018
Value of a centralized CMDB
CMDB information used by Orchestrator
Bi-directional connectors enable automation activities to come into SCSM, as well as for SCSM to issue and execute those automation workflows within Orchestrator to enable standardized service delivery
Standardized Service Delivery
Let’s think about why CMDB is so important. That is something that we may not have touched on as much, but Service Manager is considered the CMDB of the environment and that is where those policies and those standardized processes can resonate or service in terms of templates. I bring together all the request offerings and service offerings and using the templates to do so because the Runbooks is where I am getting data about the infrastructure or the people and the process as a key enabler for automation. The templates are what I am standardizing that information and that can reduce mistakes. I don’t want to see these errors occur time and time again or introduce more lead time into the environment because I need to pull together that information that my templates can easily do for me. I let the templates kick off that process and apply the necessary information on the backend.
I then use user information out of the CMDB as well. Role-based information is key because I want to have a full set of offerings, a full set of solutions for your customers, but I want to make sure that I can break out what is important for each team. No new teams may operate entirely the same way so I want to make sure that I am using role-based access to identify who can see which offerings. Who can get access to which processes when they want to kick off certain requests because all your end users are going to do is request a service. They do not necessarily need to see the Runbooks or see the automated tasks on the backend; that is what IT defines in terms of, how do I get that service in their hands.
Ultimately a CMDB information is used by Orchestrator because Orchestrator can then bring in those connectors and the information into Service Manager and tell it exactly when and where to go.
Service Manager IS the CMDB!
Stores policies and standardized processes and templates
Data about the infrastructure, people and processes is the key enabler of automation
Standardization reduces mistakes, allows processes to work across the infrastructure and to be automated
CMDB enables role based requests for services via self-service
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

7. Staying Aware through Notifications - Incident management
New incidents
Staying Aware through Notifications - Incident management
Detection and recording
Detection and recording
Easy to use forms
Templates
Incidents from , Ops Manager, DCM
Classification and initial support
Self-service portal workflow
DCM incident workflow
SCOM incident workflow
Incident update workflows
Re-route/classify incidents based priority and classification
Target resolution time based on incident priorities
Escalation workflows
Extensive notifications via , mobile devices or the portal
Classification and initial support
Investigation and diagnosis
Escalation
Workflows and control process: routing, classification, and communication
Resolution and recovery
Resolved? No
Staying aware through notifications is also a big one because I need to understand when there are some issues that are occurring and I am going to take advantage of some of my ITSM ideas in terms of Incident Management, Change Management and managing those processes so let’s say Incident Management. I want to be able to detect when an error has occurred and I want to record that information and apply a process to resolve that. I am going to use some forums, I am going to use templates and I am going to use incidents through , kicking that information from Orchestrator over to Service Manager to get that information completed. I then want to classify what type of issue has occurred. Am I reaching a threshold in terms of capacity or do I have an outage or is a server down? I am able to kick that information over to Service Manager as well and I can use the incident workflow to be able to do so. I can use information from Ops Manager to be able to do that, or Configuration Manager if I need to actually change some parameters within the environment.
I then need to update that incident and I need to reroute that process and kick that back off for prioritization because priorities are key in terms of understanding when I need to actually attend to a given issue that has occurred.
Once I know all of these steps, you will notice there is a set of steps that I can walk through here when an incident comes in. I detect and record it. I classify that incident. I investigate and diagnose that incident. Let’s say it has occurred time and time again, I can apply my previous learning's to that to resolve that. I resolve it and I recover and that is when I am able to make sure that resource or let’s say a VM is back up and running. I have resolved any capacity issues or storage issues and now I can provide that VM back to my end users without them seeing little to no downtime. That is the process that will follow when we use incidents to manage the sustainability of our environment.
Yes
Closing
Closed incidents

8. Example 2 Automate “Service Stopped” alerts 1 alert every day
1st line receives and forward (5 mins)
2nd line RDP and fix (15 mins)
1 week to build runbook
Why is this important? What can this do? Let’s add some real time parameters to this in terms of what you may see in your environment. For instance, you want to automate a step that you perform day in and day out, something that you do every day. There is an alert that is thrown. Before Service Manager, before Orchestrator or even before Systems Center you may not have anything in your environment. You are using someone on your staff to actually manually go check on this alert, go fix it, and go resolve it.
This can take a number of minutes each day of someone’s time to be able to do that. As I am seeing here, hit may take upwards of 15 to 20 minutes to be able to do this and it can take me a week to build out a Runbook to do this. Now I can compare the time that it takes me to actually build this Runbook versus the time it takes for me to actually do this day in and day out over every day of the year, 120 hours versus 40 hours to build out this automated process is a win/win and a value act for using Orchestrator to create a Runbook and automate a process that occurs all the time. Even able to save time of reduced pain for this being resolved because that is a great point for where you can start to show return on investment and back to the enterprise, back to your senior decision makers in terms of why this matters in terms of automating processes.
20 minutes x 365 days = 121 hours per year
1 week = 40 hours
40 hours / 20 minutes = 120 days = 4 months

9. Predictable Service Delivery
System Center Marketing
11/21/2018
Predictable Service Delivery
Orchestrator
Service Manager
Predictable service delivery
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

10. Orchestrating Alert Remediation
System Center Marketing
11/21/2018
Orchestrating Alert Remediation
Expand capacity
Detect and repair
Dynamically reaches for affected machine and disk
Reset using NETDOM command and start server
If fails, create incident
Await new free space issues and scale storage appropriately
Awaits secure channel issue and start server
Try to resolve issue and if no fix, trouble ticket is created
Predictable service delivery is another important piece. That is all about, how do we actually deliver that service in a predictable manner.
So I want to take a look at a couple of Runbooks that helps us be able to remediate any alerts. Let’s say, in this case, we have some alerts that are coming in. We want to remediate the problems that may be showing up in the environment and again, I want to expand some capacity. I have had an alert where, let’s say I had a VM or I had some resources and I am getting to maximum capacity on that so I know that this VM is close to being fully consumed and my users are going to see an error. My users might not have see an error yet, but Operations Manager has been very helpful in getting me this information and connecting the dots between Orchestrator and Ops Manager that has helped me do that. So, I want to wait new free space issues and scale storage appropriately.
Here is a Runbook where I want to monitor for free space alert and I built out a Runbook to be able to do that and I want to know and check, where do I see an error, a potential error that has not caused downtime yet. I want to check and delete a file and then I want to get some disk space status so that I can dynamically reach for effected machine and the disks that are going to be consumed here. This Runbook checks for that and that is what we are showing right now that we are checking for where we are in terms of a status of that threshold.
I then identify that, yes, I do have some low disk space so I want to try and resolve that issue and, if not, I want to kick off a trouble ticket. That trouble ticket can then get put into Service Manager where I want to create an incident so that Service Manager knows to go kick off some next steps to be able to go resolve that issue. I have detected that and I want to go secure a channel issue or start a server.
Here is another scenario where I want to do that. I want to detect an issue and I want to repair it so I built a Runbook to be able to do so and in this particular case I am using some commands to do that and then I want to restart that server and if it fails, if that doesn’t work, I create an incident, I go into Service Manager and Service Manager then starts to perform those same tasks as we had before so instead of an end user already getting to a point of failure and kicking off an alert and they are losing productivity in their environment or not being able to do their job, we have now been able to set some thresholds where I monitor for when I am getting low. Instead of getting to 0% I said, let me know when I am at about 20% or 10% or 15% capacity and kick off an alert and automatically resolve that issue and if that issues does not get resolved, let’s go ahead and expand capacity and remediate that problem.
That’s how we can monitor alerts and use alerts to be able to fix problems.
Orchestrator
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

11. Orchestrating Workload Maintenance
System Center Marketing
11/21/2018
Orchestrating Workload Maintenance
Patching a machine
Patching SQL
Check machine for specific patch
Check services are fine after patching
Apply change request if reorg or rebuild required
Runbook calls Configuration Manager for patching tasks
Verify patching and execute changes if needed
Evaluates parameters of databases hosted on server
Runbook calls patching sequence in machine order
Now let’s look at how we may introduce Orchestrator in a scenario where I may want to do some patch management tools or I want to fix some issues with some of my workloads so I want to think about, what can I use here? I want to patch a machine. That is essentially what I want to do and I have a Runbook here that calls Configuration Manager for patching activities that I want to perform.
What does this Runbook look like? There are a lot of steps here that I want to go through of identifying that Runbook and then going through and remediating those steps and I want to check the machine for a specific patch. I need to know, do I have the appropriate patch for this given machine? Has it been resolved? Am I up to date in terms of being compliant? I could have support issues if I am not. I can have performance issues if I am not. I want to do some consistent queries within my environment to check for the critical workloads that I have in my environment that are up to date and I want to take the next step to patch them. I then want to check services are fine after patching. I have taken those steps, I have patched. Is my service still performing appropriately? Is my VM? Is my server? Is my resource performing as it should now that I have actually stepped in and provided the patch that I have identified that I was missing? If so, I have been able to walk through that step.
The Runbook then calls patching sequence in order to end the machine order, right? So, what this is saying is that I have been able to identify a Runbook that is already sitting inside this one and again this is a nested Runbook that calls for the patching sequence because sometimes it needs to happen in a specific order. Let’s say if I have an environment that is configured, some proprietary software, or some third party software that is spread across a number of different VMs, I have a processing order to patch these machines. This Runbook calls for that process and does it appropriately.
Then I want to verify patching and execute changes if that needs to occur and here is another Runbook that I have brought into the scenario here where I want to patch SQL and I want to ensure that it has taken the appropriate effects. I want to apply the change request if this build is not done appropriately; if this has not been met as required and this Runbook runs through that process to do so.
I then want to evaluate the parameters of the databases hosted on that server, right? I need to make sure that these databases are up and running and that they are at the optimal configuration and that I have not introduced any downtime or any error or performance issues into the environment or into the database once I have been able to perform those steps.
That is how we think about orchestrating workload maintenance. I thought about patching a machine and then you think about, how do I patch SQL where other users are dependent upon its performance as they deliver a task and this is Orchestrator doing a lot of these maintenance tasks solely within the environment. I can also think about bringing in Orchestrator to do the same thing so this is how we can think about deploying these services and applying processes to automate those steps or those tasks.
Orchestrator
© 2012 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Microsoft, Windows, and other product names are or may be registered trademarks and/or trademarks in the U.S. and/or other countries.
The information herein is for informational purposes only and represents the current view of Microsoft Corporation as of the date of this presentation. Because Microsoft must respond to changing market conditions, it should not be interpreted to be a commitment on the part of Microsoft, and Microsoft cannot guarantee the accuracy of any information provided after the date of this presentation. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED OR STATUTORY, AS TO THE INFORMATION IN THIS PRESENTATION.

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This has been a great tool that you can leverage within your environment and we want to encourage you to download Systems Center 2012 R2 and get your hands on it and try Service Manager. Try Orchestrator and learn how it works and apply some of these ideas to it. You can take it a step further and try the Technet Virtual Labs as well and go in there and play with some of the unique scenarios that we have built and we have walked through that you can then play with and learn how to do the step-by-step process on your own within your environment. Lastly, we encourage you to continue to come back to Microsoft Virtual Academy and learn more about automation and self-service, Systems Center 2012 R2 and a number of the capabilities that we are delivering in our current release. Thank you and my name is Brannan Matherson.
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