Real World Best Practices with CA Workload Automation AE 11.3.6

1. World®
’16
Real World Best Practices With
CA Workload Automation AE 11.3.6
Deekshit Addepalli – Workload Automation Consultant, Robert Mark Technologies
MFX132S
MAINFRAME AND WORKLOAD AUTOMATION

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The content provided in this CA World 2016 presentation is intended for informational purposes only and does not form any type
of warranty. The information provided by a CA partner and/or CA customer has not been reviewed for accuracy by CA.
For Informational Purposes Only
Terms of this Presentation

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About RMT
§ Workload Automation Software, Professional Services and Education
Organization
§ Experience with:
– CA Workload Automation AE (CA WA AE)
– CA Workload Automation DE (CA WA dSeries)
– CA Workload Automation ESP Edition (CA WA ESP)
– CA Workload Automation CA 7 Edition (CA WA CA7)
– CA Workload Automation AutoSys® (CA WA AutoSys®) Lifecycle Management
§ Over 650 engagements in 18 years

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Agenda
CA WORKLOAD AUTOMATION AE – BEST PRACTICES
WORKLOAD CONTROL CENTER – BEST PRACTICES
SECURITY (EEM)
LEVERAGING SELF-SERVICE
AGENT UPGRADE CADENCE AND BEST PRACTICES
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CA WA AE Best Practices
§ Wherever possible, try to utilize Oracle RAC or SQL Server
Clusters to improve performance and accomplish 99.9%
uptime.
§ Try to avoid the usage of “nested boxes”.
– This reduces the overhead of recursively evaluating the starting
conditions for the child jobs/boxes
§ Try to break down box jobs into small chunks so that
workloads are more efficiently scheduled

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CA WA AE Best Practices
§ Boxes that have a lot of jobs without any starting conditions increase the
time to process the RUNNING event for the box. If possible, try to serialize
the jobs by providing dependencies between jobs
§ Drop and recreate indexes frequently. Use reindexDB.pl
§ In a large environment, utilize multiple application servers and jump
servers for a each CA WA AutoSys instance so that the app server process
on the Scheduler server is not bogged down
Self Service Hint:
– Organize internal user groups via Sharepoint to let newer teams learn and publish best
practices

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WCC Best Practices
§ Use an external database for WCC. Do NOT use Derby if it can be avoided.
§ Setup WCC in HA mode
– The same Database (Oracle or SQL Server) is used for multiple WCC servers
– WCC HA with SSL is supported with 11.4 SP2+
– Can be load balanced (Big-IP or similar)
§ Set the Alert deletion threshold property in Configuration to a value that is similar
to the alarm maintenance interval (also under Configuration in WCC)
Self Service Hint:
– Ensuring EEM is bound to LDAP/AD is key to enabling a Self Service model. This way,
changes to objects can be tracked by the ID that made the change.

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Security Best Practices
§ Create Functional Roles
– Who is part of the CA WA AutoSys admin team?
– Who is part of the 24x7 OPS team
– What access should “users” have
– Self Service Hint: Role based access for development teams necessary
§ Enforce Naming standards
– Using as-job, as-calendar,as-sendevent (new) and as-control policies on the
WorkloadAutomationAE application can secure most of the CA WA Autosys environment.
– Use EEM to enforce naming standards
Self Service Hint:
– Job naming standards are key for EEM rollout

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Security Best Practices
§ Setup EEM High Availability
– Use separate servers to setup EEM. Do not share WCC or AE servers to install
EEM.
§ Secure AutoSys (WorkloadAutomationAE) or WCC (WCC0004) or both?
– Secure the WorkloadAutomationAE application. All security authorizations are
provided by the WorkloadAutomationAE application in EEM.
– Secure the WCC0004 application to limit what the users can visually access. For
example: the administrator may want access to the Configuration tab and ECLI,
but the Users have no need to the Configuration tab.

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Strategic Approach to CA WA AE using Self-Service
§ Leverage Self-Service Approach to CA WA AE
– Workload Control Center
§ Application teams interacting with their own jobs
– Critical Path Monitoring (CPM)
§ Application teams monitoring of SLA’s
– Lifecycle Management
§ Application teams creating/editing of own jobs

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Strategic Approach to CA WA AE using Self-Service
§ Benefits of Self Service:
– Reduce the cost of ownership
– Increase productivity of staff
– Enterprise wide adoption of automation services
– Rapid delivery of change to production
– Increased quality of service
§ Deep understanding of business requirements
§ Proactively react to SLAs
– Scalability with minimal impact to Operational Expenditure

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Agent Cadence
§ Create a set cadence to upgrade the agents X times a year
§ Best Practice: Use the N+1 cadence
– If CA released build 850 of the System Agent in May and if CA
announces build 950 of the agent today
§ Upgrade the DEV agents to build 850 – wherever possible. There will be
servers where this is not possible
§ Run through the full cycle of tests and then upgrade the TST agents to build
850
§ Finish testing in the TST environment and then plan for an upgrade of the
agents to build 850 in PRD

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For assistance with anything discussed in this presentation:
Joe Geiser – Sales
T: 651.769.2574
jgeiser@robertmarktech.com
Robert Mark Technologies

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Questions?

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