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Provision software applications with Opsware Server Management System

Opsware's software provisioning capabilities give system administrators a systematic way to install, configure, and remove packaged software across Windows, Unix, and Linux servers distributed across many different data centers. The Opsware System's unique 'building-block' approach enables many teams--including the system administration team, the database team, the application development team, the 7x24 operations center engineers, and many others--to manage the same set of servers with a common view of the environment. In addition, the Opsware System helps organizations capture and apply best practices consistently across their server environment: what one system administrator learns by trial-and-error, others can leverage.

Opsware software provisioning leverages the Opsware System's innovative building-block approach that provides the following unique capabilities and benefits:

Understands latest system state and configurations. Opsware software provisioning automatically creates and updates two lists: the list of software that users indicate should be installed on a server, and the list of software that is actually installed on a server. By maintaining this detailed model of the server's current state, Opsware helps keep different IT groups which manage the same server in sync and ensures all groups making server changes are working with the same knowledge of the current state of the environment. Using this model, Opsware enables multiple groups to manage the same server without stepping over each other's changes. An accurate model of the software installed on a server, granular role-based access control, a unified audit trial, and the ability to rollback changes all contribute to Opsware's unmatched ability to coordinate the activities of many different administrators managing the same server.

Integration with other automation functions. Opsware software provisioning is fully integrated with other Opsware capabilities, enabling software provisioning to be performed automatically in conjunction with other tasks, such as OS provisioning. Because software provisioning shares the same environment model as the other functions, the state of the environment is always known. This means that different groups (e.g., OS administrators, application administrators, security administrators, and others) can work together and communicate more effectively.

Preview software installation and removal. Opsware's change engine allows users to preview install and un-install actions before applying changes to production servers. Users can view the list of software packages to be added or removed before authorizing the Opsware System to execute the change. This ensures that all changes are validated before propagating changes to the production environment.

Up-to-date model of the actual server environment. The Opsware System regularly refreshes its view of what is installed on a server, including both hardware and software. This real-time understanding of server state and configurations ensures that administrators provision the right software to the right servers at the right time. It also ensures that dependencies and pre-requisites are checked and installed as needed.

Sophisticated role-based access control. The Opsware System enforces a security policy that allows only authorized users to install or remove particular types of software on a particular server. For example, companies can define an access control rule that permits only DBAs to add or remove database servers from a server.

Unified audit trail. The Opsware System maintains a comprehensive audit trail of the software that Opsware users install, configure, and remove from a server. When combined with the additional events that Opsware tracks--including configuration updates, business application pushes and rollbacks, hardware upgrades, and executed scripts--organizations gain a complete view of server activity over time.

Rollback to a last known good state. Opsware allows users to back out of software provisioning operations. In the event an upgrade or installation goes awry, administrators can back out of the change to return to the last known good state.

Ability to store powerful name-value pairs. The Opsware System helps organizations increase software package re-use by enabling administrators to install the same software package on different servers. Server-specific configuration values are fetched from Opsware (or calculated based on those values).