Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning - Understanding IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center and IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center with Advanced Provisioning

158 Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning

7.1 Overview

IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager continues the evolution from just-in-case

storage capacity provisioning to intelligent, automated, on demand provisioning.

This is accomplished with the use of workflows.

A workflow is a list of steps or tasks that must be accomplished in order to

achieve a desired goal. Workflows have been around for a long time — also

known as flow charts, structure diagrams, concept maps, etc. IBM TotalStorage

Productivity Center with Advanced Provisioning workflows are made up of

program modules which have been pre-built. These objects can be (combined

with variables) arranged into

programs or workflows to achieve the desired

results. We call this

modular automation. This concept of modular automation

allows workflows to be easily built and removes some of the syntax and

programming errors that invariably waste much of the time spent in the

development and implementation of any automation project.

As mentioned before, workflows contain steps or tasks toward a desired goal.

For example, let us create a workflow for “getting ready for work”. What would be

the first step? Maybe getting out of bed would be your first step. The second step

might be getting dressed, then brushing your teeth, and so on. The individual

steps basically make up the “getting ready for work” workflow.

Workflows can have different levels of granularity. We can take our “getting

ready for work” workflow, and really break it down further. For example, getting

dressed can be broken down into putting on all the various layers of clothing.

Even that can be broken down further. Putting on socks can be broken down into

walking to dresser, opening drawer, selecting socks, sitting down on bed, lifting

left foot, putting on left sock, etc. In IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager, the lowest

level of granularity is provided through Java plug-ins. The next level of granularity

is the storage operations building blocks, both of which we will discuss

subsequently within this chapter.

Workflows are used in many different industries. For example, document

management has workflows. You might scan the document, put it in a folder,

place it in a specific bin, and from there it is photocopied and put on microfiche,

etc. Or in the film industry, editing movies has workflows. First you splice

everything together, pass it on the next person to remove duplicates/overlaps,

then pass it on to be edited, etc.

The IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager workflows are very similar to scripts. They

generally span across disciplines. When we talk about disciplines throughout this

chapter, we are referring to the fact that disk management is a separate

discipline from fabric management, which is separate from data management.

Workflows can easily span across these disciplines, something that is not easy to