Automation & Cloud Evolution

VMware vForum Calgary

James Charter, VCDX Practice Director, Virtualization Solutions

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

AGENDA

•About Long View •What Has Changed? •Automation Today •Ideal End State •Choices •How Can We Help?

Slide 3

About Long View

Best People. Best Practices.

Best Value.

One of the most powerful IT Solutions and Services Company

Offices across North America

Industry leading expertise in key technology innovations and best practices

Innovative, flexible, cost-effective, and business focused

A people-focused corporate culture dedicated to “Being the Best”

Slide 4

Key Statistics:

• Calgary (CDN HQ), Vancouver, Victoria, Edmonton, Toronto, Denver (USA HQ), Houston, Dallas,

Phoenix

• Largest and Fastest Growing IT Solutions Company 10 to 1000+ employees, $2M to $300M+ in 14 years • 850+ employees are technical today • 2014 total headcount trending to

1300+

• Privately owned and debt free, focused organic growth in leading technology areas

Quick Stats

What we do

Slide 5

Strategic Partners

• VMware Premier Solution Provider (Canada/US)

• VMware Enterprise Service Provider

• Cisco Gold Partner

• EMC Velocity Solution Provider Partner

• VCE Solution Provider (Canada/US)

• HP Converged Infrastructure Elite Partner

• NetApp Star Partner

• FlexPod Premium Partner (First Canadian Premium Partner)

Slide 6

What we do

Virtualization

ASSESSMENTS: • Environment Health Checks • Full Technology Assessments • Operational Readiness • Business cases & ROI analysis

SOLUTIONS: • Converged Infrastructure • Private Cloud / Infrastructure as-a-

Service • Public Cloud • Virtual Desktop Infrastructure • Application Virtualization

Infrastructure and Packaging • Onsite Experts

PLANNING & DESIGN: • Architect and Design Solutions • Proof of Concepts and Pilots • Disaster Recovery Planning • Solution Strategies & Roadmaps MANAGEMENT & OPTIMIZATION: • Systems Automation,

Provisioning and Capacity Allocation

• Backup and Recovery • Performance and Capacity

Management • Availability, Monitoring and

Alerting solutions

Slide 7

What Has Changed?

Product Functionality &

Announcements @ VMworld 2013 San Francisco

• vCloud Director development stopping after the 5.5 release, patches only, no new features

• vCloud Director product functionality being replaced by vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) and future release vCenter capabilities

• So what do we do?

• So what do we use?

vCloud Automation

Center

Slide 8

vCloud Director

Transition

http://blogs.vmware.com/vsphere/2013/09/vcloud-director-convergence-and-transition-plan-whats-the-scoop.html

vCAC 6.0 now offers Secure Multi-tenancy

Slide 9

Automation Today

How do we do it now? Mostly

Scripting!

Let’s start at the beginning…

What does automation look like today?

Basic automation

• Product interface or scripts to accomplish simple workflows

• Single use & some re-occurring administrative use

Advanced automation

• Multiple toolsets to accomplish complicated workflows for scalability

• Enterprise automation toolsets

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Automation Today

How do we do it now? Scripting!

What does basic automation look like today?

Basic automation

• Product interface typically (or scripts)

• vCenter Orchestrator for simple workflows

• PowerCLI & PowerShell for simple tasks

• vCloud Director for deploying vApps

• Requires some skill and scripting knowledge, minimal investment

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Automation Today

Basic scripted tasks

What does automation look like today?

Basic automation

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Automation Today

How do we do it now? Multiple

toolsets!

What does advanced automation look like today?

• Web Portal front end

• vCenter Orchestrator for backend workflows (AMQP, component plug-ins, call other scripts, start other tasks, provision physical components)

• PowerShell scripting for component specific requirements

• Requires skills and ongoing investment

Slide 13

Automation Today

How do we do it with one toolset?

What does advanced automation look like today with Enterprise tools?

• Web Portal front end

• Orchestration framework with modules of repeatable workflows, scalable

• Extensible with scripting for component specific requirements

• Requires skills and ongoing investment

Slide 14

Automation Today

How do we do it now? Multiple

toolsets!

Public Tenant Provisioning Workflow

IPAM & CMDB

3rd Party Calls • Network

Provisioning • Server

Provisioning • Storage

Provisioning

Tenant environment created

Workflow Portal

From 4 Hours to 15 Minutes!

Slide 15

Automation Today

How do we do it now? Workflows!

Back end vCO workflows for client and admin tasks

Slide 16

Ideal End State

Where should I be going with this?

• Bare metal to applications (fast scaling, agile)

• Reusable tasks (everything is repeatable, efficiency)

• Integration between provisioning, logging, reporting, alerting, decommissioning (circle of life)

• Reduce operation effort – focus on faster service, more services, more flexibility (business value, agile)

Why? What is the benefit?

Slide 17

Why Do We Want to

Automate?

Product Functionality &

• Common day-to-day tasks

• Deployment of customized VMs

• Provide Self Service Portal for end users and fenced networking

• Provide a full life-cycle management flow from inception to decommissioning servers

• Include application deployment into the workflow

PowerShell, Scripts, vCO

vCD

vCAC

vCAC with App Director

Basic M

ore A

dvan

ced

Au

tom

ation

Co

mp

lexity

Slide 18

Effort to Automate Processes

Complexity = Bad

Can’t the more advanced tasks all be done just with Scripts, PowerShell and vCO?

Do you want to spend months and years creating complex workflows?

Slide 19

Consider Server Life-

Cycle

How does your organization deploy

applications?

Slide 20

vCAC

Out of the Box Functionality

All out of the box! And with a Self Service Portal

Slide 21

Administrative Interface

Governance & Management

Admins manage the environment - Governance - Policies

Slide 23

Choices

What do I do? Scripting

So what if I am already invested in scripting today?

• Is it giving you what you want? Then keep doing it!

• Requires more substantial skill and time investment than you have? Leverage more vCO to increase your benefit.

• Require more advanced features? Consider vCAC

Going forward more vCO integration will be available in products

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Choices

What do I do? vCloud Director

So what if I am already invested in vCloud Director today?

vCloud Director Basic Deployment

• Meeting your needs? Keep it, look at upgrade/migration later

• If you need network fencing, keep it until roadmap catches up with vCAC

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Choices

What do I do?

So what if I need Infrastructure as a Service now and can’t wait for new functionality in a future release?

Determine your use case, simple questions:

Do you need network fencing?

YES - vCloud Director

NO – vCloud Automation Center (vCAC)

• Do not layer vCAC and vCD – too complex!

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Choices

What do I do?

Do you need this?

Cradle to Grave lifecycle with integration to existing process tools

CMDB

Slide 28

Approaches for Success

Where to invest now?

You’ve determined that you can benefit from more automation

What can I be investing in right now to help me?

• Determine where automation could help

• vCenter Orchestrator

• PowerShell

• vCloud Automation Center (vCAC)

• vFabric Application Director

If you can take away one thing today: Use vCO – most environments don’t leverage this tool! It will become more important going forward.

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Questions?? Questions

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More Information?

Education Resources

vBrownBag Automation Track - Podcasts

https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/professionalvmware-vbrownbag/id468638808?mt=2

vCO Blog

http://blogs.vmware.com/orchestrator/tag/orchestration

Power CLI Blog

http://blogs.vmware.com/PowerCLI/

VMTN PowerCLI Community

https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/automationtools/powercli?view=discussions

William Lam Blog

http://www.virtuallyghetto.com/

Alan Renouf

http://www.virtu-al.net/2013/12/04/automationits-just-tick-box/

Luc D Blog

http://www.lucd.info/

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How can we help?

Interested in moving forward with your own integrations?

• Drop by the Long View table, tell us your story, and talk with one of our experts

• Ask to have one of our Account team book a meeting to discuss your requirements

Contact us

Email: info@longviewsystems.com

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Contact Us

Let’s get connected.

Facebook Facebook.com/ longviewsystems

Twitter Twitter.com/ longviewsystems

Linkedin Linkedin.com/ company/17908

YouTube Youtube.com/ longviewsystems

James Charter Practice Director, Virtualization Solutions Email: james.charter@lvs1.com Twitter: @DavesRant Blog: www.longviewsystems.com/blog Blog: www.jamescharter.com Calgary Office Main: 403.515.6900 Email: calgarysales@lvs1.com

Thank You