Orchestration

Imagine a world where a data center is situated several miles away from a corporate office, even rebooting the server requires a big commute to the data center. Imagine desktop technicians going through each desktop and installing software on each system. Imagine several manual steps in provisioning an AD or a virtual resource. Things have changed and people expect a speedy service and a more automated way of removing manual steps.

Orchestration is the automated arrangement, coordination, and management of complex computer systems, middleware, and services. Thanks to the automation tools available, it makes things much simpler. ServiceNow orchestration capabilities, unlike any other tools, provide orchestration or automation capabilities. Orchestration automates simple or complex multi-system tasks on remote services, servers, applications, and hardware. Orchestration is available as a separate subscription from the rest of the ServiceNow platform.

Orchestration provides the ability to make calls outside of a ServiceNow instance, directly to SOAP and REST web services, or to systems within an enterprise's corporate firewall through the MID Server. ServiceNow has workflow editor to create and define workflows across the different applications. The Orchestration extends the workflow editor by providing these features:

Activity packs containing ready-to-use activities:

• An activity designer that allows developers to create custom activities without having to rely on scripting
• The ability to create activity packs using scoped applications
• A databus for reusable data

When an orchestration activity starts within a workflow, orchestration launches a probe and writes a probe record to the ECC queue. The workflow pauses as the MID Server picks up the request and executes the probe. When the probe reports back, the workflow resumes as the results are analyzed. The workflow can exit or continue at this point.

Orchestration extends the ServiceNow workflow to interact with systems outside the ServiceNow instance. Orchestration provides custom activity packs you can use to automate tasks such as employee onboarding, user access rights, server management, and managed file transfers.

MID Server plays an important role in providing orchestration capability. MID Servers are associated with IP address ranges, enabling orchestration to select the correct MID Server to use for an orchestration activity based on the IP address of the target machine.

This functionality ensures that an MID Server with proper privileges is available wherever orchestration probes need to operate in a network. Auto finder also enables administrators to define specific capabilities for each MID Server within an IP address range.

Some of the automation that ServiceNow orchestration can perform includes the following VMware (through vCenter):

• Amazon EC2 instances
• Any system presenting web services
• Windows Active Directory (AD)
• Microsoft Exchange mail servers
• Puppet labs Puppet (with configuration automation)
• Chef (with configuration automation)
• Any system accessible from the command line

The AD activity pack enables an administrator to create, delete, and manage objects in Windows AD, such as users, groups, and computers, using a ServiceNow orchestration workflow.

For example, you can reset a password automatically from a user request. You can manage any user account in AD with these activities, whether or not it was created by an orchestration workflow. Orchestration workflow can perform the following in relation to the Activity directory:

• Add a user to group AD activity
• Change an AD user password
• Create an AD object
• Disable an AD user account
• Enable an AD user account
• Check if an AD account is locked
• Query AD
• Remove an AD object
• Remove a user from group AD activity
• Reset an AD user password
• Unlock an AD account
• Update an AD object

Orchestration provides several applications with your subscription:

• Orchestration ROI: The orchestration ROI application computes savings resulting from automated tasks in your instance, based on the hourly rate selected for performing tasks manually and the time period of the evaluation. Orchestration ROI estimates your savings by multiplying the cost of performing repetitive tasks manually by the estimated number of times the system performs those tasks automatically during a specific date/time range. The system also calculates the actual savings of your automations. Orchestration ROI is included with the base orchestration subscription. Orchestration ROI reports offer a number of views of the comparative data and allow you to access the associated records directly from the reports.
• Client software distribution: The Client Software Distribution (CSD) application allows administrators to distribute software from the service catalog using third-party management systems. CSD allows an administrator to create all the records necessary to deploy software from service catalog requests, including software models and catalog items. CSD also integrates with software asset management to track license counts for deployed software. Deployment is accomplished using orchestration activities and workflows.
  
  

• Configuration automation: Configuration automation allows you to use ServiceNow orchestration, Puppet, and Chef to provision and configure inpidual servers or groups of servers in your network. Chef is a server management application that can use ServiceNow CI data to bring Linux or Windows computers into a desired state by managing files, services, or packages installed on physical or virtual machines. Puppet is a server management application that can use CMDB data to bring computers into a desired state by managing files, services, or packages installed on physical or virtual machines. The ServiceNow application can interact with Puppet systems that run on Linux.
• Password reset and password change: The password reset application allows end users to use a self-service process to reset their own passwords on the local ServiceNow instance. Alternatively, your organization can implement a process that requires service-desk personnel to reset passwords for end users. The password change application extends the password reset application by letting admins define how users change their passwords.
• Self-service process: Users reset their password over the Internet using a browser on all supported interfaces, including mobile devices.
• Service-desk password reset process: Users reset their passwords with the assistance of a service-desk employee, over the phone or in person.