Achieving best business results from enterprise IT means automating standard tasks wherever that makes good business sense. A manual solution, though it confers the benefit of human oversight, also often involves hidden shortcomings and inconsistencies that diminish the overall business value.
One good example, for instance, would be the case of operating system (OS) provisioning. Such a process, if handled manually, is exceptionally time-intensive for IT staff. A single from-scratch manual OS installation and configuration will often require multiple hours and the close attention of a member of the IT staff—a relatively expensive process from an operational standpoint, and unattractive to budget-challenged IT teams at a time when cost savings are often a primary business goal. Moreover, at any point in the process, errors may occur that go unnoticed. These can easily lead to subsequent problems, ranging from application failures to inconsistent performance to serious security breaches that put the company at risk of attack from either external hackers or malicious insiders.
 This is particularly true in the case of Linux provisioning. While Linux installation has generally become easier in the course of the last decade, it is still typically far from the one-click process associated with some mainstream operating systems. Significant personal expertise on the part of the IT staff can be required to tailor a Linux build for its associated hardware, and as that hardware changes from server to server, the challenge becomes proportionally greater. Furthermore, in an enterprise-class environment, installing Linux often means installing much more than the core OS; numerous system, application, middleware, and support files must be copied from multiple CDs, and the computer must subsequently be configured to operate properly on the network and with other systems and applications.
Consider the added complexity of Linux in its business context. Increasingly, enterprise IT divisions seek to deploy Linux servers along with servers driven by other operating systems. Furthermore, rolling out new IT services and applications will sometimes require provisioning many servers at once, despite the fact that the provisioning process differs enormously across these various operating systems. Attempting to solve this problem through training IT employees to provision servers directly, using wholly different methods depending on the operating system to be installed, seems a suboptimal approach—time-consuming, error-prone, and ultimately expensive.
What, then, is the best alternative? Service-oriented architecture methodologies suggest that one excellent way to go about optimizing IT operations involves abstracting out core functions, refining and automating them whenever possible, and then redelivering them to any IT service that invokes them. This approach not only delivers high return on investment—due to the significantly higher level of automation—but confers additional core benefits in the areas of scalability and security as well. Today’s enterprise-class IT teams, therefore, should be open to the possibility of revising their OS deployment methodology along SOA lines.
IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment Is a Best-in-Class OS Provisioning Tool
Such a sophisticated approach, however, requires similarly sophisticated technology. IBM’s response? IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Operating System Deployment. This impressively comprehensive solution delivers full OS provisioning functionality for any computer on the network, from end-user notebooks to core servers used to support composite applications.
IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment leverages disk images—essentially, prepared digital snapshots of a hard drive at a particular point in time. Once created, these images can be provisioned from one or more servers to any other computer in the IT infrastructure in any logical sequence, including many simultaneous installations if need be. These images can be constructed for many leading operating systems, and include virtually any number of configured elements (applications, middleware, and others).
Furthermore, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment provides first-rate image management. Besides supporting any number of separate images, the tool can work with a single image in multiple ways to deliver tailored results. For instance, in cases where a series of computers require fundamentally similar provisioning, yet nevertheless still require slight modifications from machine to machine due to minor hardware differences, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment can utilize a core image, then modify it dynamically on a case-by-case basis by adding specific drivers that map to that hardware, or applications which map to that operating system.
This business win is particularly significant in the case of Linux deployments, since the extra complexity of the Linux installation process is abstracted away completely; all supported operating systems can be provisioned in the same way. Thus, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment not only automates OS provisioning, but from the standpoint of IT, unifies it. IT is empowered to provision supported operating systems in the same reliable way, using the same tool, regardless of the underlying reality that those operating systems differ enormously in installation complexity and the target computers differ in hardware. Both the cost savings to IT and the reliability of the provisioning process are enhanced tremendously as a result.
IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment is also exceptionally easy to manage. Its interface, an elegant console, can be accessed from within any standard Web browser, meaning that a network manager need not be tied to a particular machine to access its functions. The server itself is similarly flexible, and can be installed and run on a wide variety of common server platforms including several flavors of Windows, Linux, Solaris, and even Macintosh OS X. Once installed and running, the server can be completely automated via its scripted interface; thus, provisioning can be arranged to take place at times of minimal business impact to the network, such as the middle of the night or, based on information dynamically drawn from other tools, any given time when the demand on the overall IT infrastructure is perceived as sufficiently low. Because IT staff isn’t required to oversee the process, they’re also free to attend to more complex tasks that leverage their domain knowledge more efficiently.
What’s more, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment can be installed on multiple servers, which then cross-communicate to enhance and accelerate the deployment process still further. Nor, in this situation, is management complexity increased. The same Web interface can be used to achieve central control and service visibility, despite the technically sophisticated server interaction.
Easily and Securely Provision an OS to Any Computer—Even a Blank Server
The solution’s benefits do not end there. As part of the flexible, best-in-class IBM Tivoli system management portfolio, it might be expected that IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment would support multiple media and installation methodologies, and that expectation would prove correct. The tool can be configured to work via traditional optical drives, provided the disk image is stored on a CD/DVD, as well as Windows PE (a lightweight Windows variation specifically suited to deployment contexts). However, the method most likely to be useful to enterprise IT divisions, which often must deploy tens or even hundreds of systems in a given timeframe, is the bare-metal provisioning option in which those systems require no hands-on attention at all.
In this scenario, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment works through a technology known as PXE (Preboot Execution Environment); once a given system has been connected to the network and turned on, it will automatically connect to a PXE server across the network. IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment will then utilize its integrated PXE server to provision the new system from scratch, even though its hard drive is completely blank. Multiply that process by hundreds of new systems, and the concept of SOA-style provisioning is realized.
Naturally, in any situation involving mass provisioning of operating systems to key servers, a central concern has to be security. Fortunately for IBM customers, this area, too, has been considered in the design. IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment also supports strong end-to-end cryptography, based on the Advanced Encryption Standard, specifically to eliminate such an event from occurring. Even in cases where a bare-metal installation is required, all data transmitted between the PXE server and the provisioned system is encrypted. This security can be augmented still further; the tool can restrict PXE functionality to a specific list of servers, closing off the possibility that a rogue PXE server could be set up to hijack the installation process.
Finally, IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment also integrates effectively with other IBM Tivoli solutions to provide even more comprehensive functionality.
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