Enigmatec Virtual Orchestrator (EVO)
Automated Management of Virtual and Physical Infrastructure
The widespread deployment of virtualization technologies has greatly improved server utilization, application reliability, and user productivity.
This powerful new class of software is changing the way IT departments provide infrastructure and resources to application development, and production, and the way IT resources are allocated and shared. However, already overburdened IT support teams are struggling to develop new approaches to the management of rapidly proliferating virtual environments, and the integration required with existing systems.
Key challenges include:
- Prevent Server Sprawl: The ability of virtualization to provide standard images and snapshots in minutes has encouraged a certain amount of 'consume all you can', and 'lazy behavior' when it comes to handing back the server when it's purpose has been served. This proliferation of idle machines is typically referred to as server sprawl.
- Increased Demand for Shared IT Resources: Means that IT support teams are spending more time balancing competing needs for virtual resources.
- Cost Control: Doing “more with less” means having to develop and enforce resource allocation and chargeback policies – another added responsibility for IT support teams.
- Compressed Application Development Cycles: Require rapid set-up/tear-down of virtual servers for development and test teams – typically a labor-intensive manual process.
- Avoiding Vendor Lock-in: The virtualization revolution has only just started, and management techniques and best practices are still being formed. IT support teams want to choose a best-of-breed solution, not compromised management systems based on old management techniques and tools.
Enigmatec Virtual Orchestrator – Less Stress and More Control
For today’s increasingly dynamic data center, Enigmatec Virtual Orchestrator (EVO) significantly reduces your administrative burden of provisioning requested virtual machines, physical machines, and support infrastructure. EVO eliminates the heavy lifting of ongoing lifecycle management by automating process and procedures, while constantly ensuring KPI's stay within defined SLO's.
Key features include:
- Lifecycle Management of a Virtual, Physical, or Mixed Environment stack: Request, provision, dynamically size and host a server within your IT infrastructure, knowing that all appropriate systems are kept up to date. When the lease is up on a server, then a decommission process released resources for reuse.
- Multi-Vendor Support: EVO is not locked into any one vendor management portfolio, or proprietary protocol. In fact, one of the primary reasons why many of our customers chose Enigmatec is that we are fully agnostic, and fully embrace the desire for a heterogeneous data center.
- Integration with the IT Process: building on our success with the Enigmatec Management System™, EVO has many user accessible hook points for integrating existing systems such as the IT Service Desk. i.e. ticket reconciliation, update, and closure
- Governance and Compliance: EVO maintains tight control over the full life-cycle of a server; wizard based self-service provisioning of the server, approval schemes, server lease management, controlled decommission schemes. In addition, as EVO is an application of the Enigmatec Management System™, then full process and procedure auditing, and adherence of KPI's to SLO's are first class management concepts.
Lifecycle Management
EVO automates your IT workflows and orchestrates the multitude of technologies required to provision, configure, allocate, and reclaim virtual resources.
The web-based portal allows users to request new virtual services based on standard “blueprints”. If the request meets automated approval criteria, EVO provisions the service, orchestrates any post-provisioning configuration, and allocates the service to the user for a pre-set “lease” period.
For special requests, built-in approval schemes kick in to notify an administrator, who can then approve, modify, or reject the request. Once the virtual service is deployed, EVO continues to manage it throughout the lifecycle, automatically handling lease extensions, configuration change requests, and more.
The workflow below illustrates the basic lifecycle as managed and automated by EVO. Many of our customers take this process as a starting point and add-in their own IT process as appropriate.
