You can use the Operation Center of Alibaba Cloud CloudOps Orchestration Service (OOS) to centrally manage all your O&M items.
As your business adopts the cloud, daily O&M becomes more complex. This complexity increases as your cloud resources grow, especially with the rapid expansion of Elastic Computing Service (ECS) instances. Frequent O&M tasks are required, such as security patch updates, performance optimization, backup verification, and cost optimization. Without a unified administration system, problems such as missed tasks, unclear responsibilities, untraceable operations, and redundant executions can easily arise.
Worse, many temporary or recurring O&M items, such as "an ECS disk is almost full" or "a vulnerability must be fixed by a deadline", rely on personal memory or word of mouth. These items are often forgotten, which can lead to production incidents.
To solve these problems, OOS provides a powerful O&M item feature. This feature supports structured, categorized, stateful, and traceable centralized management for all O&M tasks. This helps you shift from reactive responses to proactive administration.
Why centrally manage O&M items?
Problem | Consequence |
O&M tasks are scattered across WhatsApp, tickets, and emails. | Information silos lead to missed tasks. |
No unified view or priority sorting. | Urgent tasks are delayed. |
Operations are performed manually by different people. | Inconsistent standards and high risk. |
Task status cannot be tracked (Is it handled? Who handled it?). | Responsibility is difficult to trace. |
Frequent tasks are not based on templates. | Low efficiency. |
The O&M item feature in the OOS Operation Center enables you to manage the entire lifecycle of all O&M items: Create → Execute → Follow up → Close → Audit.
O&M item management dimensions
For effective administration, configure the following key properties when you create an O&M item:
Dimension | Description and example |
O&M category | Defines the nature of the task: |
Severity | Measures the scope of impact: |
Priority (1-5) | Determines the processing order: |
Linked resource | Binds to specific cloud resources, such as an ECS instance ID or an RDS instance name. |
Execution status | Dynamically updates the progress: |
Procedure
Log on to the CloudOps Orchestration Service console. In the navigation pane on the left, choose Operation Center.
Click the O&M Items tab and then click Create Operations Items.
On the Create O&M Item page, configure the O&M item.
Name: Enter a name for the O&M item to describe the issue.
(Optional) Source: Provide information about the affected resources or other background information.
Priority: Select a priority for O&M engineers. Values range from 1 to 5, where a smaller number indicates a higher priority.
Severity: Select a severity to indicate the impact of the O&M item. Options are Low, Medium, High, and Serious.
Category: Select a category for the O&M item. Options are Availability, Cost, Performance, Backup recovery, and Safety.
(Optional) Description: Enter a detailed description of the O&M item.
(Optional) Resources: Select the resources related to this O&M item.
Click Create to create the O&M item.
You can now centrally manage O&M items in the OOS Operation Center. You can also adjust their configurations and update their statuses.
Conclusion
The centralized management feature for O&M items in the OOS Operation Center helps your enterprise achieve the following:
Unified entry point: Consolidate scattered O&M operations.
Intelligent scheduling: Automatically allocate resources based on priority and severity.
Full visibility: Track the status of tasks from creation to closure.
You can start with key ECS O&M scenarios and then gradually expand to other Alibaba Cloud services such as Relational Database Service (RDS) and Server Load Balancer (SLB). This helps you build a standardized, enterprise-level operations management system.