Datacenter Automation

August Schell provides expert support to customers of Opsware, Inc.

Opsware Inc. is the worlds leading IT automation and utility computing software company. The growth of the Internet is driving a shift from client/server computing to Web architecture. With this shift comes an overwhelming proliferation of servers, networking devices and applications, creating massive complexity that makes an automated IT model a necessity. Opsware automates the complete IT lifecycle and delivers utility computing by enabling IT to automatically provision, patch, configure, secure, change, scale, audit, recover, consolidate, migrate, and reallocate servers, network devices and applications. Over 280 of the worlds largest companies, outsourcers and government agencies use Opsware to deliver this new, automated model of IT. For more information on Opsware Inc., please visit their Web site at www.opsware.com.

Opsware is a service mark and trademark of Opsware Inc.



The August Schell team, along with the Opsware product line, ensures that operations are done right the first time!

Datacenter Automation for Security Solutions

Security solutions within large organizations must be powerful and scalable. This challenge is best addressed by deploying small, powerful, well-designed servers with tightly controlled configurations and by adding new servers as demand increases.

Implementation of an effective Configuration Management process for networks, servers, and desktops is crucial to ensure high availability and trust but has been proven to also be the “Achilles heal” to the successful implementation of security solutions.

August Schell specializes in rapid server deployment through the use of datacenter automation technology that allows the creation of server templates to support Configuration Management for medium to massively large deployments.

Case Study: August Schell, using Opsware's server and network automation products has helped federal agencies with their configuration management challenges to manage hundreds of geographically dispersed servers in tightly secured environments.

August Schell has architected solutions that take advantage of Opsware's multi-mastering replication capabilities to ensure high system availability. These solutions required the creation of sophisticated scripts customized to the agencies environment which were used to strictly maintain remote server configurations. The systems constantly monitor and update servers and network devices located in remote data centers as well as in unmanned ("lights out") facilities. Custom scripts were also developed to provide bare-bones provisioning of new systems to provide standardized builds to make deployments consistent across dispersed datacenters.

August Schell’s Datacenter Automation support at these agencies has reduced labor costs and downtime, helped meet regulatory compliance, and has enhanced disaster recovery plans.