This document discusses several compelling reasons for automating projects using automation tools, including middleware upgrades, migrating applications to reduce costs, building private clouds, upgrading core applications, platform migrations, and rearchitecting IT infrastructures. It also summarizes the Scripts plugin for RapidDeploy, which allows centrally managing and deploying scripts to targets. The plugin can snapshot, template, parameterize, and deploy scripts as part of automated jobs.

1. Compelling Events for Automation
• Middleware Upgrades It’s great when new vendors
bring out new features - but often taking advantage of
them takes a good deal of time and effort to upgrade
the new infrastructure - and introduces risk. Automating
the upgrade project speeds it up, reduces the risk and
builds a more manageable platform in the future.
• Migrating off ‘Premium Product’ With the economy
as it is, more organizations are forced to tighten their
belts, and one area that has come under particular
scrutiny is the annual cost of maintaining installed
software. Some organizations have made the decision
to move less business critical applications off more
expensive middleware onto open-source platforms
such as JBoss and Tomcat. This type of project is
accelerated when it’s automated and an automation
tool makes managing hybrid or heterogeneous
environments much easier.
• Building a PAAS or a private cloud With pressure
on businesses to deliver more innovation to their
customers, faster, we see many of our customers
building Platforms As A Service and private clouds.
These are a lot faster and quicker to set up using an
automation tool, and a lot quicker to manage demand
once they are up and running.
• Core business application upgrades or migrations
Many of our customers occasionally need to upgrade
or even replace their core business applications - often
complex, multi-layered, integrated systems that have
evolved over time and have many integration points
and are absolutely critical to the minute by minute
operations of the business. Using an automation tool
can reduce the risk and time associated with such
a project.
• Platform migrations Sometimes it’s time to move
from one platform to another - for instance, customers
sometimes feel that a UNIX based platform will
offer them performance advantages over an OS400
platform. But moving hundreds of middleware
applications might seem like a challenge too far -
without automation.
• Rearchitecting Change is a constant and businesses
need to continually evolve their IT infrastructure
and operations, build new environments for things
like Disaster Recovery and automating the build
and deployment of these new environments means
delivering them faster.
Scripts Insights
• This plugin allows you to manage scripts on
target servers. You can snapshot a scripts
directory, by giving the top level directory path
and a set of filesets to include/exclude for both
configuration and binary files. This snapshot set
of files can be compared over time (comparison
of checksums for the binary filesets) to
determine configuration drifts.
• The scripts can be templated and parameterised
using environment specific data dictionary
files and packaged up for deployment to other
targets, thus enabling scripts files to be stored in
the SCM tool on the framework server, managed
centrally and deployed out to target servers just
as you would for code.
• The scripts can be run from the deployment
package or from a target managed location as
part of the deployment job, or run as a separate
scripts execution job.
RapidDeploy™ Plugin for Scripts
RapidDeploy™ provides organizations with Application Release Automation capabilities
to reduce costs, improve productivity and time to value and assure compliance. There
is a range of plugins available to extend the core automation framework capabilities to
most available platforms and perform integrations throughout the DevOps toolchain.
This datasheet refers to the Scripts plugin.
Plugins are downloaded through the Plugin Manager console in RapidDeploy™, or from the MidVision
website at www.midvision.com.
RapidDeploy™TargetPlugins

2. Scripts Plugin Overview
The RapidDeploy™ Scripts plugin allows the user
to deploy and or run any script on Windows or any
flavour of Unix/Linux. For example Shell, Perl, Ant, bat
files. Any command line parameters may be set, to
different values in different environments if required.
Any environment variables used by the script may be
set for each target environment and referenced from the
target environments shell or dynamically set in the shell
from an environment variables file that can be stored
in the software configuration management tool. The
scripts may be deployed to the target server and run,
or run directly from the server. Scripts can be stored in
the user’s software configuration management tool so
that updates to scripts can automatically be deployed
to target environments via releases similar to those you
already do for code.
If you use software that is not listed here and you
would like to manage it using RapidDeploy™ please
email sales@midvision.com with the details. For
future versions, we aim to have support within two
quarters of the vendor announcing general availability,
although customer demand can accelerate our
development roadmap.
RapidDeploy™ Plugins
The RapidDeploy™ plugins extend the functionality of
the core automation framework and are categorised in
the following way:
• Toolchain plugins enabling integration with Build
Engines, Artifact repositories and Source Control
Management tools
• Transport plugins enabling use of SSH and
Agent capability
• Target plugins enabling connectivity with broad
range of Middleware Applications and Databases
• Cloud plugins enabling connectivity to cloud providers
• Business Intelligence plugins to extend the
CAF including for example, enhanced comparison
functionality and additional reporting capabilities
Plugins ship with:
• A Library of commonly used tasks
• Wizards extensive help information
• Predefined automation library elements
www.midvision.com©MidVision2013.Allrightsreserved.RapidDeploy™TargetPlugins
Want this plugin? Getting hold of it’s easy - either:
1) Go to the Plugin Manager in your installation of RapidDeploy™ and pick your plugin from the list or
2) Go to www.midvision.com Support Downloads RapidDeploy Plugin Downloads and select your
plugin from there. If you have any problems, please call or email your MidVision Account Manager.
You must license your plugin separately - please speak to your MidVision Account Manager
or email sales@midvision.com. If you are an IBM Rational Automation Framework customer and
would like access to this plugin, please contact us at www.midvision.com.