By Shantanu Kaushik
We created this series on Operation & Maintenance (O&M) solutions as they are an essential link between infrastructure and a stable, reliable, and available service structure. An efficient O&M is the first requirement if you want to extract business intelligence and excellence. You leverage more performance out of your robust cloud infrastructure with an efficient O&M service.
In the previous article, we discussed Alibaba Cloud Bastionhost. In this article, we will introduce Alibaba Cloud Operation Orchestration Service (OOS), discuss different usage scenarios and benefits, and how it can help you achieve business goals.
Alibaba Cloud OOS is a robust automated O&M service that allows different methods of O&M operations by facilitating quick execution. Some of these methods are listed below:
Alibaba Cloud OOS can execute various O&M tasks and manage multiple approval requests. It can also manage various Alibaba Cloud services, including Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Server Load Balancer (SLB), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), Object Storage Service (OSS), and Database systems. Alibaba Cloud OOS is a free add-on that comes with an Alibaba Cloud account when you buy other products and services.
Let's look at the procedure followed by Alibaba Cloud OOS:
Alibaba Cloud OOS is a managed service based on serverless architecture. It enables the automatic execution of O&M tasks without hogging computing resources. It meets the industry requirements on O&M and supports small, medium, and large-scale industry-specific O&M.
Let's take a look at how O&M tasks are handled:
Alibaba Cloud OOS helps manage and execute O&M tasks in a standardized way. You can create automated O&M templates to define the tasks for automated execution. OOS helps cut-down mistakes during manual execution and increases security and efficiency.
Alibaba Cloud OOS provides various benefits:
1. Security and Authorization
Alibaba Cloud OOS utilizes the seasoned services of Alibaba Cloud Resource and Access Management (RAM). OOS helps you easily configure permissions to access different roles and operations to handle O&M tasks for Alibaba Cloud services securely.
Authorization is a key point when managing O&M personnel. Alibaba Cloud RAM manages permissions for identity management. RAM defines multiple roles to make transparent execution possible and maintain the hierarchy of operation to distributed low-level tasks from the high-level tasks.
2. Template-Based
Alibaba Cloud OOS utilizes easy-to-use templates that suit multiple scenarios. You can create a new template to define a custom O&M workflow or use a pre-defined template to execute an O&M task. This maximizes the overall efficiency associated with the O&M process.
Another helpful tool associated with Alibaba Cloud OOS is the visualized flowchart for each O&M execution. This helps monitor the execution process, track errors, and follow the sequence of task completion.
3. Cross-Region Support
Alibaba Cloud spans its services in many regions and countries, which makes it difficult to perform O&M. However, Alibaba Cloud OOS enables cross-region O&M support using circular tasks. You can use the templates within the OOS service and perform O&M tasks on server resources using the region ID associated with the region.
4. Batch Operations
Alibaba Cloud OOS enhances the overall operations using batch execution of tasks on multiple resources concurrently. These resources can be ECS instances or Server Load Balancer (SLB).
5. Manage Approval Requests
The operation orchestration service (OOS) helps you manage approval requests for multiple scenarios. This ensures that only the expected and approved O&M operations are performed.
Alibaba Cloud OOS helps manage multiple O&M operations simultaneously. For this scenario, we will use Elastic Compute Service (ECS) as an example. You can manage multiple ECS instances simultaneously with OOS. Different tags can be used to address ECS instances based on the presented requirement of O&M.
Let's take a look at how the architecture works in this scenario:
You can easily perform tasks to query available storage space on the SSD drive linked to the multiple ECS instances. You can do this by selecting a template and using different IDs, tags, or resource groups associated with those ECS instances. You can also run cloud assistant commands in batches to ensure that you are getting the required results before proceeding with the remainder of the O&M tasks.
Alibaba Cloud OOS can push custom image updates for the system or application as required. Enterprises have different requirements that entail a certain amount of customization with different business systems. OOS allows the custom image updates necessary for business continuity and security requirements.
Alibaba Cloud OOS provides an automated O&M execution. Regular updates ensure a safe runtime environment for ECS instances. OOS allows you generate a new image using a source image. Then, you can use the new image for testing purposes or use it for production.
Let's take a look at the architecture associated with this scenario:
Alibaba Cloud OOS automatically detects the status of preemptible instances. It automatically dumps the data logs of the previous SLB instance before the new instance is released.
The architecture leverages Alibaba Cloud Monitor for event tracking. Then, it uses API Gateway and Server Load Balancer (SLB) to execute an efficient O&M process.
This scenario is particularly useful with:
Alibaba Cloud OSS supports the scheduling of management tasks. Some O&M tasks have to be executed as scheduled, just like after a series of testing scenarios, you need to clear the storage of any logs from the previous tests.
In this scenario, you need to delete all Object Storage Service (OSS) files that were generated by the previous tests. Alibaba Cloud OOS can help create a template and schedule delete operations based on your requirements to prepare a clean runtime environment for the next test.
In this series on Operation and Management (O&M), we covered the needs of O&M and discussed how an efficient O&M solution is the key to enhancing productivity in any business environment. You can extend solutions to any industry and practice with tools that work on the cloud and on-premises, including hybrid cloud, DevOps, or multi-cloud setups.
Providing O&M in multiple regions is another tedious practice. Alibaba Cloud's host of solutions and integrated service network can help you achieve this feat. Lastly, we discussed Alibaba Cloud Bastionhost and Operation Orchestration Service (OOS), two highly capable and efficient services for any O&M requirements.
2,597 posts | 772 followers
FollowAlibaba Clouder - January 27, 2021
Alibaba Clouder - January 27, 2021
Alibaba Clouder - January 27, 2021
Alibaba Cloud Community - March 2, 2022
Alibaba Cloud New Products - June 3, 2020
Alibaba Cloud ECS - June 3, 2021
2,597 posts | 772 followers
Follow
Bastionhost
A unified, efficient, and secure platform that provides cloud-based O&M, access control, and operation audit.
Learn More
Managed Service for Grafana
Managed Service for Grafana displays a large amount of data in real time to provide an overview of business and O&M monitoring.
Learn More
RAM(Resource Access Management)
Secure your cloud resources with Resource Access Management to define fine-grained access permissions for users and groups
Learn More
Resource Management
Organize and manage your resources in a hierarchical manner by using resource directories, folders, accounts, and resource groups.
Learn MoreMore Posts by Alibaba Clouder
