180 Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning
IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center with Advanced Provisioning also provides
the ability to clone and copy any of the provided, custom-made, or created
workflows, so that you may gain productivity by using working examples to make
a start on new development. Additional benefits include the fact that these
workflows are already working, and that they provide some of the standard
names and structures that need to be used in structured approach to
programming.
7.7 Custom workflow creation
It is not our intent to document, step-by-step, how to create a custom workflow of
your own here. Rather, we would like to give you a high-level overview and
breakdown of workflows and their components’ interrelationships to give you an
understanding of the power workflow reuse has, and its potential. You can find
detailed instructions on creating your own custom workflows in the IBM Tivoli
Provisioning Manager Operator’s Guide.
Simply stated, a workflow is a sequenced set of one or more Java plug-ins. It can
be large and complex, contain other nested workflows, or can be as simple as
executing a single Java plug-in. In this way, workflows make it possible to build
powerful library of processes that can be assembled to meet any data center or
storage process requirement.
To be able to configure, customize, and successfully execute various workflows,
you need to create, configure, and manage Java plug-ins, and logical device
operations, as described in detail in the IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager
Operator’s Guide. All the configuration procedures including workflows, Java
plug-ins, and logical device operations are available from the System
configuration and workflow management navigation tree (see Figure 7-11).
Figure 7-11 System Configuration and Workflow Management tab
Chapter 7. Workflows 181
7.7.1 Workflow plug-ins
A Java plug-in is the Java class that contains the interface or the protocol code
that will interact with the devices in the data center, including the IBM Tivoli
Intelligent Orchestrator Service itself (if installed). A simple workflow can be a
wrapper for a Java plug-in, describing the plug-in’s input and output
requirements through its set of input and output variables. You can see a
graphical representation of this in Figure 7-12. The workflow performs an action
on the external environment, such as creating or removing a zone, adding or
removing a zone member, creating or removing a storage volume, mapping a
storage volume to a server, and so on.
Figure 7-12 A workflow executing a Java plug-in
The workflow framework and the plug-in design make it possible to manage any
data center asset. Full editing capabilities for workflow design are provided, and
existing workflows can be copied, referenced, or extended. This allows you to
begin with a standardized process and customize it.
The Deployment Engine supports a standard approach in creating system
solutions. By being able to have multiple references to the enterprise’s standard
workflows, process standards can be established.
Changes to the data center or storage environment made by the Deployment
Engine are reversible in the following way: By implementation, key workflows
that build an environment can also have another workflow to break down that
environment, and return the components to a resource pool.
Attention: We created a video showing how to work with custom plug-ins.
Please take a look at the TPM_Overview video. Please follow the instructions
in Appendix A, “Additional material” on page 223 to download the video.
Outputparameter
Outputparameter
Java plug-in
Inputparameter
Inputparameter
Inputparameter
182 Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning
In case you would like to import your own Java plug-in, you can use the import
Java plug-in function as shown in Figure 7-13.
Figure 7-13 Java plug-in import
To run an already existing Java plug-in, simply create a new workflow, browse
through the left pane until you find the plug-in that you would like to run, and drag
and drop it from the left pane into the right pane where you created your
workflow. This is shown in Figure 7-14.
Chapter 7. Workflows 183
Figure 7-14 Drag and drop plug-in into workflow
Another possibility for how to run your custom Java or Jython applet, using
custom parameters, is shown in Figure 7-15. Here we created a new workflow
and used the Assignment function that is provided with IBM Tivoli Provisioning
Manager. Simply drag and drop the function into the workflow and you can
specify your parameters.

Get Exploring Storage Management Efficiencies and Provisioning - Understanding IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center and IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center with Advanced Provisioning now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.