Problem
Today’s server environments are diverse, distributed, and increasingly complex. Constant shifts in business conditions, mergers and acquisitions, security concerns and rapidly changing technologies — as well as the ongoing drive for consolidation and efficiency — have created dynamic conditions that are increasingly difficult to manage; yet the applications and business systems they support are more critical than ever. IT organizations are faced with the challenge of cost-effectively and reliably managing ever-increasing and always-changing business needs, while continuing to meet exacting uptime and service level requirements. Companies may not have access to adequate reporting or system modeling tools that will tell them how their server farms could be affected when events hit the network operations center (NOC). Additionally, because there is no defined process or process “language” that is shared between Engineering and the Distributed Server Operations team, communication, process, and interactions are inconsistent between the two.
Others challenges exist due to lack of visibility into the optimal windows of opportunity in which to implement changes, or into the current vulnerability assessment of the data center systems. And virtualization is an exploding trend meant to answer the growing cost of server sprawl and provide on demand capacity. However, virtualization has its own issues and threat of “sprawl.” Enterprises must now manage the virtualized server component of their data center, and this can be very difficult if they have no way of knowing where these virtual systems are, what they’re doing, when and how they are provisioned, and managing them over time.
Solution
The BMC BladeLogic Operations Manager is a leading platform for the management, control and enforcement of configuration changes in the data center. It consists of three modules that address the three most pressing needs in the data center: Configuration, Compliance, and Virtualization.
Configuration Module
The BMC BladeLogic Configuration Module for Servers (part of the BladeLogic Operations Manager) uses a policy-based approach to provision, patch, configure, and update servers across platforms. Changes are applied to a policy and then synchronized with the target servers. This bi-directional approach lowers the cost and errors associated with managing server infrastructure. It also features a cross-platform, command line interface (Network Shell™) that supports single-sign on using a range of authentication protocols. All user communication is encrypted, and all user actions are logged and can be authorized based on a user's role.
Compliance Module
IT compliance measurement is often a costly, manual process that requires domain experts. With the BMC BladeLogic Compliance Module for Servers, you can measure compliance with internal and external standards and regulations. You can create policies based on internal best practices, vendor recommendations (like PCI DSSS), or frameworks like COBIT. The policies enforce compliance through prevention and remediation. With the reporting capabilities, you’ll be able to demonstrate compliance with standards and the presence of appropriate controls.
Virtualization Module
BMC BladeLogic Virtualization Module for Servers enables IT organizations to manage both physical and virtual environments from a unified management platform resulting in greater infrastructure consistency and reduced downtime. Through BladeLogic Virtualization Manager's integrated approach, it is transparent to an end user whether a given server or application service being managed is running on a physical machine or on a virtual instance residing in a virtual container
BMC BladeLogic:
- Accelerates the delivery of new services
- Reduces the risk of change
- Improves productivity and lowers the unit cost of management
- Enforces operational, security, and regulatory compliance