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Automation with System Center 2012 R2 Orchestrator
Guided Steps
In the form of System Center Orchestrator (SCO) [1], Microsoft provides a tool for automating the workflows and processes of an IT infrastructure. This promises to save valuable time and money. Getting started is easy, and the first automated processes are rapidly accomplished, but Orchestrator only unfolds its full power in conjunction with other tools.
SCO 2012 R2 lets admins create various tasks and procedures using a graphical user interface in the Runbook Designer. The result is a Runbook that can be used to automate IT operations and which is executed, for example, in Runbook Designer or the Orchestration Console. You can implement the following tasks with the help of SCO:
- Automation of processes in the datacenter, regardless of hardware or platform.
- Automation of IT operations and standardization of methods to improve efficiency.
- Connecting systems by different providers, without requiring any knowledge of scripting or programming languages.
Powerful Automation through Collaboration
A functional SCO environment comprises numerous components that can be installed together on a single system or distributed across multiple computers:
- Management server
- Orchestrator web service
- Orchestration Console
- Runbook Designer
- Runbook server
- Deployment Manager
The Orchestrator Management server is the communication layer between the Runbook Designer and the orchestration database that runs on a SQL Server. The Orchestrator web service gives applications the ability to communicate with the Orchestrator service via a representational state transfer (REST) interface. Using the orchestration console, you can start, stop, and check the status of Runbooks. And, as already mentioned, Runbook Designer is the central instrument for
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