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Automation at Its Best: A Look at FlexPod Intersight Workflow

: Harnessing the Power of Automation

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Anand Louis
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IT administrators are looking to reduce manual processes in their day-to-day operations with automation that’s repeatable and with templatized routines and workflows.

The FlexPod® automation project, in conjunction with Cisco Intersight Cloud Orchestrator, serves as a prime example of this technological revolution. This open-source initiative, accessible on GitHub, employs automation to streamline your data center operations.

Cisco Intersight Cloud Orchestrator

FlexPod Intersight Workflow: An automation-centric approach

The FlexPod Intersight Workflow project is open source, and it’s designed to help you manage your FlexPod infrastructure by using Cisco Intersight Cloud Orchestrator. The core of this project is its automation-centric approach, offering you a set of workflows that automate various aspects of FlexPod management, such as infrastructure deployment, configuration, and maintenance.

The power of FlexPod automation

With the automation capabilities of the FlexPod Intersight Workflow, your organization gains several significant benefits:

  • Efficiency. Reduce the time and effort that are required for routine management tasks, leading to increased operational efficiency for your organization. Your IT team can focus on strategic tasks, enhancing productivity.
  • Simplicity. The workflows simplify complex operations, making it easier for your IT team to manage and to monitor the infrastructure. This simplicity reduces the chance of human error and improves your overall operational process.
  • Scalability. Your infrastructure can scale smoothly, handling increased workload without the need for constant manual intervention. This scalability is crucial in today’s fast-paced, data-driven environments.

Use cases enabled with FlexPod Intersight Workflow

With Intersight Cloud Orchestrator, it’s easy to implement basic operations like create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) in your NetApp® and VMware workflows:

  • NetApp ONTAP® configuration:
    • Create storage virtual machines (SVMs) for ONTAP secure separation.
    • Create and remove initiator groups and data interfaces for iSCSI and FC.
    • Create and remove export policy and data interfaces for NAS.
  • End-to-end workflows:
    • Create and remove NetApp Smart Volume and Smart LUNs and map them as VMware NAS and VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) datastores.

Workflows available from the Cisco Community for FlexPod

You can find several workflows for FlexPod from the Cisco Community, including:

  • Add Initiators to NetApp Initiator Group
  • New Export Policy for NetApp Volume
  • New NAS Datastore Using NetApp Smart Volume
  • New NetApp FC Data Interface
  • New NetApp Initiator Group
  • New NetApp iSCSI Data Interface
  • New NetApp NAS Data Interface
  • New NetApp Storage Virtual Machine
  • New VMFS Datastore Using NetApp Smart LUN
  • Remove Initiators from NetApp Initiator Group
  • Remove NAS Datastore Using NetApp Smart Volume
  • Remove NetApp Export Policy
  • Remove NetApp Initiator Group
  • Remove VMFS Datastore Using NetApp Smart LUN
  • Update NAS Datastore Using NetApp Smart Volume
  • Update VMFS Datastore Using NetApp Smart LUN

Conclusion

With its strong emphasis on automation, the FlexPod Intersight Workflow stands out as an excellent choice to streamline your operations and to increase productivity. By reducing manual effort, by simplifying operations, and by enabling scalability, it provides a robust and efficient solution for managing your data center.

For the latest updates on this project and to find out how to add the FlexPod Intersight Workflow to your own Intersight account, visit the project’s GitHub page. You can also review the list of NetApp tasks in Intersight Cloud Orchestrator.

More details

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Anand Louis

Anand Louis is a Principal Product Manager for FlexPod at NetApp’s Hybrid Cloud Group. He is currently responsible for FlexPod XCS, joint Cisco & NetApp solution, built on Cisco Intersight. Prior to NetApp, Anand has held positions in product management, sales enablement and marketing teams at high-tech companies including Cisco Systems and Juniper Networks.

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