Operation Efficiency Improvements for IT Infrastructure through Runbook Automation Technology

Enterprises have been consolidating their servers within on-premises data centers to optimize their entire information technology (IT) infrastructure, and they are now working to create private clouds through virtualization. The operation of an on-premises data center follows a “runbook” that describes the procedures to be taken in a step-by-step manner for either daily operations or emergency situations. Since the consolidation of servers and conversion to a cloud environment increases the volume and load of data center operations, there is a need to reduce the operation load and improve operation quality by automating these operations, which have until now been performed manually according to the runbook. Runbook automation (RBA) technology has been attracting attention as a means of standardizing and automating the workflow of manual IT-infrastructure operations and dramatically improving operation efficiency. This paper introduces Fujitsu’s approach to making IT infrastructure operations in a data center more efficient through the use of RBA technology.