Chapter 45. Distributed Automation Processing
As we start using CloudForms Automate to expand our workflows into the wider enterprise, we may find that we need to add further CloudForms appliances to spread the workload in our region.
CloudForms Automate has been designed to be scalable by supporting distributed worker appliances, each running the Automation Engine role and polling the VMDB database appliance for work. In this chapter we’ll take an in-depth look at how the automation operations are distributed among appliances via a central queue. This is another background information chapter, so feel free to skip it on first read or bookmark it for later reference.
Nondistributed Automation Operations
Not all automation operations need to have a distributed capability. Some automation operations interact with a user through the WebUI, and these require an instance/method to be run directly on the WebUI node to which the user is logged in. Such operations include:
-
Running an Automate instance from simulation
-
Automate instances that are run to populate dynamic dialog elements
Some other automation operations need to be executed synchronously and in a specific order, and these are also run on a single appliance to guarantee execution order. An example of this is running a control policy synchronous action type of Invoke a Custom Automation.
The Automation Engine role does not need to be enabled for these nondistributed automation operations to run.
Distributed Automation ...
Get Mastering CloudForms Automation 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.
