Greetings and welcome to the Q4-2023 edition of IT-Conductor Latest Automation Features. As we bring another thrilling year to a close, we’ve gathered a few of the functionalities released in this quarter that could benefit datacenter engineers, SAP operational teams, and security specialists devoted to maintaining the health of their systems and infrastructure.
Here's to the festive season filled with joy and warm wishes. Season’s greetings!
Table of Contents
4. SAP Kernel Update Automation
5. Linux Kernel Patching Automation
1. VMware Monitoring
IT-Conductor now introduces VMware monitoring, empowering customers to proactively monitor and manage the performance and health of virtualized infrastructure that runs on VMware technologies. This will allow the early detection of potential issues that could impact the underlying infrastructure of your production systems. The capabilities include monitoring virtual machines, their power state, current server resource utilization (such as compute and memory), and overseeing ESX/ESXi hosts, vCenter, and other resources within a VMware infrastructure. The aim is to ensure optimal performance, identify potential issues, and take proactive measures to maintain the reliability of the virtualized infrastructure.
Datacenter engineers can leverage this feature to track the performance metrics of their servers, perform effective capacity planning, receive alerts and notifications for any deviation from set thresholds, monitor the health of critical resources, and keep a close eye on resource utilization.
This offering proves particularly beneficial for customers relying on VMware technology for their production workloads, providing them with the tools to maintain the performance, stability, and security of virtualized infrastructures, ensuring a seamless operation of applications and services.
Figure 1: VMware Monitoring in IT-Conductor
2. Spool Request Monitoring
Exploring a specialized domain within SAP monitoring, IT-Conductor now offers the capability to monitor the status of print requests that may encounter delays or issues. Various factors can hinder connectivity to a remote output device, resulting in different print statuses. When spools encounter delays, statuses such as waiting in the host spooler, output device unavailable, errors reported by the host spool, or an inability to connect to the output processor may arise.
IT-Conductor empowers you to identify critical print statuses and promptly alerts server administrators to address issues before they impact production activities. This functionality aids in pinpointing the reasons behind a print request not being output on a printer or another device, thereby resolving user-related issues during print requests in SAP.
3. CVE Monitoring
In our commitment to enhancing security awareness and capabilities for our customers, IT-Conductor now offers Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) monitoring. This feature enables the detection, reporting, and management of known CVEs in software and systems, covering potential vulnerabilities in the operating system, SAP applications, and databases running in your environment.
These vulnerabilities are categorized based on affected areas such as network, local, physical, etc. This is an invaluable asset for your security team responsible for monthly system vulnerability patching and safeguarding your landscape against unwanted intrusions and attacks.
Our user-friendly dashboard facilitates the display of CVEs according to different component areas in your environment. It allows enterprise security teams to detect information security vulnerabilities and exposures in their system landscape and implement appropriate controls to mitigate known threats.
As a security expert, staying informed about CVEs is crucial for identifying potential security risks in the systems you support. It enables you to identify security threats, and take remediation actions to protect against exploitation or unauthorized access to systems, thus guarding against inadvertent exposure of sensitive information.
By monitoring CVEs regularly, you can take proactive measures such as applying patches or implementing workarounds to mitigate security threats and ensure the integrity of the systems you manage.
Figure 2: CVE Dashboard in IT-Conductor
4. SAP Kernel Update Automation
IT-Conductor SAP Kernel Update Automation is a purpose-built solution designed to streamline and simplify the process of updating the SAP kernel, the foundational component of an SAP system. This automation focuses on minimizing the manual effort and time traditionally associated with tasks such as connecting to SAP servers, deploying patches, and manually restarting the SAP system during kernel updates. By automating these processes, SAP administrators can mitigate complexities, improve overall efficiency, and minimize potential disruptions tied to the conventional manual approach to SAP kernel updates.
5. Linux Kernel Patching Automation
System admins express concerns about the manual process of patching the OS kernel, emphasizing the need to ensure system security, maintain system uptime SLA, and comply with company policies. Addressing this worry, IT-Conductor has introduced an OS kernel patch automation solution.
This efficient solution streamlines the patching process through a user-friendly wizard. Users can easily select the desired system, patch version, and reboot preferences, mitigating the risk of unwanted outages. Notably, users can monitor real-time logs for each running or completed activity, enabling you to quickly detect any anomaly.
Since this tool is native to IT-Conductor’s APM solution, it eliminates the need for a separate third-party tool for patch management, thereby providing cost savings to our customers.
This approach minimizes human errors and reduces the time required for patching, ensuring critical systems are regularly patched without causing significant disruptions.
Another added advantage is IT-Conductor’s Schedule functionality which enables the mass deployment of patches across multiple systems at a designated future date, simplifying orchestration and saving time.
System administrators benefit from simplified patching, resulting in time savings and error avoidance. This contributes to enhanced security, improved stability, reduced downtime, and facilitates compliance maintenance.
Linux kernel patching with IT-Conductor ensures the application of critical security updates, addresses vulnerabilities without immediate reboots, and aligns with an organization's uptime requirements, offering a holistic approach to system maintenance and security.
Figure 3: OS Kernel Patch Automation
We encourage you to try out any of these functionalities designed to elevate the operational efficiency of our valued customers.
As we bid farewell to this year, we extend our sincere wishes for a festive season brimming with joy and warmth.