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