In fact, scripting is almost always a stepping stone to automation.  Which brings up several questions about scripting and about Nolio Automation Center that I’d like to address here.

Is scripting bad?

Of course not.  Most customers get their toes into the waters of automation with some level of scripting.  Our best customers are the ones that have gotten some benefits from scripts but have really reached the limits of what they can do with scripting and need something that is more effective and less prone to human errors.

Is the Nolio tool a GUI for creating my scripts?

No, it’s really not. Scripting has certain limitations – particularly around maintainability, mutltiple envinorments/ labs/ datacenter synchronization, documentation, and troubleshooting.

Most importantly, scripting does not provide you with management of the execution – reports of what was done, by whom and where in the Datacenter, so that later on you can use that information in a user friendly and timely manner.

Nolio automation completely avoids these limitations. In fact, no script is generated in Nolio. Instead, there’s a distributed workflow engine that “knows” how to run the Noio automated processes, and adjusts to any environment. This gives you the benefits of automation without the downside of scripts.

Do I need to recreate all my existing scripts?

No. In fact, I can’t think of one customer that hasn’t integrated in-house scripts into their Nolio implementation.

One of the major benefits of using Nolio is adding the following layers, which do not exist in scripts, on top of existing scripts:

1.  A communication and synchronization layer. Scripts usually run on a single server, so you need to write additional code to manage scripts on multiple servers, and you need to write additional code to execute different scripts on different server types in multiple data center environments. You need to have the ability to synchronize and run scripts in stages. Using scripts, you need to write an additional layer of code to achieve this. Nolio platforms allow you to get all of the above for your current scripts without writing additional code.

2. Permissions – The Nolio permissions mechanism allows you to get now-active directory integration and provide roles and authorities to your scripts’ activations and design.

3. Notification and scheduler abilities – extend your scripts’ power, by using Nolio to provide a scheduler and advanced notification mechanism. Be alerted when your scripts are activated, stopped, failed, and completed.

4. Reports – This is the most important part. Automation is only one part, but the real management of data center activity is to KNOW what was running, when and status.  Empower your scripts to have a full reporting system for your script activation, including management reports, which enable you to show your managers your achievements!

As you can see, the Nolio automation solution does not come instead of scripts, but in addition to them. It adds layers that significantly enhance your scripts’ power. Learn more at www.nolio.com

To deliver real-time option pricing, SuperDerivatives delivers 15 applications, operating across 100 servers, distributed over 8 global data centers. Each application requires weekly updates: content changes, new features and bug fixes.

Prior to adopting Nolio’s solution, these weekly changes involved R&D, QA and Operations and were done by executing a large number of error-prone manual service tasks. This obviously consumed a large chunk of SuperDerivatives’ web operation team’s time.

SuperDerivatives desperately needed to streamline application changes and eliminate misconfiguration errors.

Nolio’s Application Service Automation enabled SuperDerivatives to eliminate the use of scripts, affording a highly streamlined, error-free process for deploying application changes.

Matty Rosen, SuperDerivatives’ Head of Data Center Operations says, “Our customers depend on our hosted financial tools. Managing application consistency across our 8 global data centers, and our ability to reliably execute application changes in a timely manner, is therefor essential for our business.”

Rosen adds, “In addition to Nolio’s measurable productivity benefits, translating into labor cost savings, the ability to establish and enforce best practices across operations and all departments involved in application production, including R&D and QA, is Nolio’s intangible value of heightened application quality and manageability.”

SuperDerivatives experienced dramatic productivity gains once it adopted the Nolio solution for application change automation:

• Eliminating scripting reduced labor overhead from 2 days to just 30 minutes.
• Labor overhead for weekly updates has been reduced from 3 days involving 3 employees to JUST 1 HOUR.
• Labor for troubleshooting tasks has been reduced from 10 hours to 15 minutes.
• Application service auditing, not possible prior to Nolio, is now provided on demand.

Visit us at www.noliosoft.com to see how Nolio can dramatically improve your data center application operations.

As you probably know by now, relying on scripts to deploy, manage and make changes to your data center applications is highly ineffective. Scripts are prone to human errors. They place a heavy burden on operations staff to maintain them. They are costly in terms of time and significantly reduce productivity.

The only way to truly streamline data center processes is to fully automate them, and this is exactly what Nolio does. By automating data center processes, Nolio eliminates the use of scripts and provides customers with tremendous gains in efficiency and productivity.

We established this blog because we wanted a space where we could share our views on application service automation; tell you more about our exciting software; share customer success stories and more. Comments are on: please feel free to comment, to ask questions and to add your own input to anything we discuss here.