Service Delivery: The Deployment Phase - The Practice of Cloud System Administration - page 214

10.3 Operations Console
The operations console is software that manages the operational processes, especially the
deployment steps. Like the build console, it is a web-based system that makes it easy to
view results and past history, and keeps statistics about success rates, process duration, and
more.
Nearly everything said about the build console can be repeated in regard to the opera-
tions console, so refer to Section 9.4 . Security and authorization might be more important
here because processes can affect live services. For example, there may tighter controls
over who may initiate a launch for a new release into production.
10.4 Infrastructure Automation Strategies
A few strategic tips will help you fully automate the deploy phase so that it can run un-
attended in the console. As discussed earlier, there is a flow for deploying infrastructure
and another flow for deploying the service itself. Deploying the entire stack can be broken
down even further: preparing and testing the physical or virtual machine, installing the op-
erating system, installing and configuring the service. Each of these is a discrete step that
can be automated separately. In fact, in large environments you'll find different teams re-
sponsible for each step.
10.4.1 Preparing Physical Machines
Preparing a physical machine involves unboxing it, mounting it in a rack, cabling it, con-
figuring BIOS settings, and testing. The earlier steps require physical work and are very
difficult to automate. Very few companies can afford robotics to do these steps. However,
we can reduce the labor by installing them one rack at a time instead of one machine at a
time, thereby taking advantage of economies of mass production. Another way to improve
the process is to use blade servers . Blade servers are a technology made up of one chassis
for many individual computers, each on a “blade,” which makes installation and mainten-
ance easier. At very large scale, machines are designed with specific features to enable fast
and efficient mass installation. Google and other companies design their own hardware to
ensure design features meet their needs.
We have seen some impressive systems that automate the new hardware intake process.
The Tumblr Invisible Touch system automates upgrading firmware, setting up the Base-
board Management Controller (BMC), adding the machine to Tumblr's inventory system,
performing a multi-hour stress test, and configuring the network.
A quick-and-dirty solution is to manually install hardware and configure BIOS settings
but automate the process of verifying that the settings are correct. Since BIOS settings