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FEATURED ARTICLE
CLARITY ACTIONS™
BY MATTHEW ZITO, CHIEF SCIENTIST
GridApp has been focused on what we like to call "out-of-the-box automation" for quite some time now. We believe (and we've seen) that generic data center automation solutions put too much of a burden on the DBA to try and script out how databases should be deployed in their environment. Not only is the scripting difficult, but also it has a potentially huge level of variability in that scripted process. What if some databases are clustered on Veritas (i.e. some need to be Oracle RAC and some are purely standalone)? What if different lines of business require different sets of standard patches?
Based on this feedback and our design goals of: ease-of-use, rapid development, and strong security, we built Clarity Actions. In a nutshell, Clarity Actions is a framework that allows customers to wrap a script in our GUI, with Clarity providing the software store, the security model, job logging, user inputs, and execution content. When a new Action is built, the administrator defines a scope for the Action, for example, "This Action is targeted towards Oracle 9.2.0.x Oracle databases running on Solaris or AIX in the following business units." This scoping allows teams to have certain activities only available to certain environments based on the internal business rules. Then, the administrator builds a GUI for the action, defining what kind of inputs the action should take, and what metadata needs to be tracked. Finally, a script is written that actually does the work - Clarity will provide a slew of information in the environment, making it easy to write the script generically. That's the whole process - any basic Action should be able to be written, start to end, in less than 10 minutes.
The targeted area for Actions is what we like to think of as "task" automation. Any activity that is repetitive or overly complex can be turned into an Action. We determine if an Action should be made in two ways – first, if it is a simple task that needs to be done across a number of databases at once (i.e. mass password changes) and second, if it is something extremely complex that needs to be done to only one database at a time, but has a high level of risk, such as configuring replication. There are activities that are probably not well-suited for Actions, like creating a table on one database, or rebuilding an index. These kinds of tasks are not particularly difficult and would probably not be done across a large number of servers, thus would have a very low level of repetition. However, for other classes of activities, Clarity Actions can be a lifesaver.
One interesting side effect that our customers have expressed about Clarity Actions that we did not anticipate, is the desire to use Actions to move certain DBA activities outside of the DBA team entirely. For example, using Actions to lock out users or change passwords in the database can allow the security team to manage that process without giving them sensitive database passwords or local access to the system. Instead, Actions will lock them down to just that activity, on just the servers and databases they should have access to.
With this ease of use and elegant flexibility, customer response has been overwhelmingly positive. Many customers have already begun writing Actions, and we have plans underway to extend the functionality of Actions in future releases by providing more opportunities for customization and execution flexibility.
Thanks to Clarity Actions, we can cover the whole lifecycle of database automation. Our out-of-the-box database provisioning allows organizations to simply build standards for how they want databases built and created, starting with a strong foundation for database deployments. Clarity's native patching allows users to focus on the patches they want deployed without having to worry about differences in the environments (such as "is this database clustered or not”), which keeps databases secure and stable. And now, with Clarity Actions, DBAs can make sure that the administration of their databases is faster, more consistent, and easier than it has ever been in the past.
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