Data Sheet

Data Center Automation
Automate your service governance processes from end-to-end with smarter patching, continuous
compliance management, advanced process orchestration, and enterprise-scale provisioning.
Product Highlights
Service Level Objective (SLO)-BasedPatch Scan and Remediation for
Multi-Vendor Server OS
Patch Policies. Perform automated infrastructure patch scan and remediation actions using
patch policies. Policies contain measurement
and remediation Service Level Objectives(SLOs) and patch bundles. SLOs define thefrequency for automated scan and remediation actions while resource group maintenancewindows define when the jobs can be run.
Resource groups are subscribed to policies,
while resource patch bundles contain information about the type of patches included (e.g.,vendor recommended patches or an explicit

list of individual patches) along with any corresponding Common Vulnerability Exposure(CVE) data from the National Vulnerability
Database (NVD). Remediation SLOs ensure resources remain compliant with patch policies.
Static Patching. Patches can be applied using
vendor specific patching infrastructure and local repositories. Create custom patch bundlesof various types (e.g., recommended, critical,etc.) for multi-vendor operating systems, suchas Windows, RHEL, SOLARIS, and more. When
adding patches to a patch policy, patch filters
allow sorting of patches based on patch release date, CVSS, and more.

Key Benefits■ Automate multi-platform patching, compliance,and provisioning to achieve high-quality,repeatable processes; eliminate manual errors
and hand-offs between technology silos■ Detect and remediate vulnerability andcompliance risks proactively across thedata center; eliminate inconsistent patching,intermittent compliance, and meet Service
Level Objectives■ Standardize provisioning across multi-vendor
server OS and application infrastructure;eliminate error prone manual tasks■ Native integrations with other OpenText ITOM
solutions provide a more holistic view ofdatacenter vulnerabilities■ Integrate with existing third-party toolsets via
REST APIs to achieve quicker time to value■ Pre and post policy workflows allow for custom
process integration

Figure 1. The risk dashboard shows patch vulnerabilities and CVE data across the datacenter.

Data Sheet
Data Center Automation

Dynamic Patching. OpenText™ Data Center
Automation (DCA) queries the vendor specificupdate utilities on the target resource to determine which patches should be applied basedon vendor recommendations.
The risk dashboard uses CVE data imported
from the NVD to identify patching vulnerabilities across IT infrastructure. Resources areevaluated for exposure to all known CVEs andresults are displayed on the dashboard in various sections. The dashboard can be customized to show statistics including weekly impact
trends and number of affected resources forvulnerabilities of particular interest. Other areas
show key information such as most recent vulnerabilities and affected resources, overall resource count by vulnerability status, resource
type and count by CVE severity (e.g., 55 critical
CVEs on RHEL resources), and vulnerabilities
by age (e.g., 14 resources have had an ongoing critical exposure for a period greater thanone year).

Automated, Policy-Based Compliance
Scan and Remediation for
Multi-Vendor Server OS
Ongoing, Policy Based Compliance. Auditand Remediation SLOs are defined for eachcompliance policy. SLOs define the frequency
for audit and/or remediation jobs (e.g., daily,weekly, or monthly). Maintenance schedules
are created for resource groups to establish
the time period in which these jobs will be run(e.g., Sunday between 12:00am and 6:00am).
Out-Of-The-Box (OOTB) Compliance Scanand Remediation Content. Leverage prebuilt compliance content for a broad range of
popular IT, regulatory, and security compliancebenchmarks such as CIS, PCI, DSS, SOX, ISO
27001, FISMA, HIPAA, NERC, DISA, and more.
The OOTB compliance content includes compliance deployment templates and remediation content. Along with its OOTB compliance
content, DCA allows you to create custom
compliance benchmarks and policies to meet
any internal compliance needs. Policies can2contain benchmarks for mixed resource types
and can be applied to a resource group containing multiple resource types.

can be customized to include advanced configurations such as RAID and BIOS settings.
Configure custom scripts to be run at time ofbuild to further customize deployments. Allprovisioning can be scheduled or run ad hoc.
Provision Bare Metal. Bare metal servers canbe provisioned using a PXE boot process.
Servers are PXE booted and brought undermanagement using an agent. The customizable build plan is then deployed to install thedesired OS.

Figure 2. Drilldown from dashboard showing
needed patches with CVSS severity.

Provision Virtual Servers. View an inventoryof unmanaged VMware vCenter and Microsoft
SCVMM VMs. OS build plans can be configured to create a VM from a template. When an
OS build plan is deployed the selected servers
are brought under management and then thedesired OS is installed.

Process Orchestration

Figure 3. Resource management screen shows
patch and compliance statistics for a given resource.

Compliance Dashboard. Obtain compliancereports via dashboards available for resourcegroups, individual resources, and policies.
Observe key details on compliance such ascompliance status (within or outside of SLOs),
severity, and failed benchmarks. Overall infrastructure compliance statistics and metrics areavailable from the central dashboard. Drill into
the dashboard for more detailed information
including benchmark and resource identification. DCA’s Collect-Once-Store-Once (COSO)
reporting allows you to report on historical aswell as transactional compliance data.

Provisioning and Configuration Features
Configurable Build Plans. Out-of-the-box
with customizable build plans for multi-vendor
OS including but not limited to: RHEL, Solaris,Windows, CentOS, and Ubuntu. Build plans

DCA uses out-of-the-box orchestration workflows to perform DCA operations on managed multivendor OS. Orchestration flows
can be created as extensions to automate any
processes related to the provisioning, patching, and compliance lifecycle of a resource.
Leverage orchestration workflows to integratewith 3rd party tools and existing content, forexample—create a workflow that updates aservice management ticket when a compliance or provisioning operation is performed
on a particular resource or resource type.

DCA Containerized Deployment OptionBuilt on top of the ITOM Container Deployment
Foundation (CDF), containerized DCA presents
new innovations for orchestrated infrastructure management. The ITOM CDF platform hasa simple install process and once installed handles all provisioning, orchestration, and management of the underlying core Kubernetes/Docker cluster infrastructure. The CDF UI is asingle portal used for DCA suite and CDF platform management tasks, making it easier toscale and offering in-place upgrades.

Robust Reporting and Integrations
Integration with Operations Bridge Manager.
Out-of-the-box integration with OpenText™
Operations Bridge Manager (OBM) allows
DCA to send compliance and vulnerability scandata into OBM to further assess the businessservice level impact of vulnerabilities on specific resources, giving a more holistic view ofthe datacenter.
DCA COSO Reporting. Powered by the ITOM
reporting service. Leverage OOTB businessvalue dashboards or bring your own BI tool tocreate reports that best fit your needs. Analyzeboth historical as well as operational data to
gain a complete picture of the risk and compliance state of your datacenter.
REST APIs. Call DCA functionality from any
external tool that can consume APIs. Modern
REST APIs allow you to integrate DCA functionality into your workflows for a truly customizedexperience. Seamlessly integrate patch andcompliance functionality for secure, compliant deployments.

Figure 4. OpenText DCA process framework

DCA Suite Management. Monitor job queues
and check the health and status of individual
service pods from the analytics dashboard.
Debug issues by viewing log files and configuration files from the UI. Create and manage suite
namespaces and perform other suite configuration tasks including installs and upgrades.
Scale Horizontally. Easily scale DCA for
greater resource capacity by adding newKubernetes worker nodes. Worker nodes canbe added from the CDF UI. Once credentials
are provided for the new worker node, CDF installs Kubernetes/ Docker on the node. When
CDF completes the provisioning of the newworker node it is added to the cluster and begins to accept workloads from the master.
Headless Operation. Because DCA is built on
open APIs, any DCA on CDF feature is available
using RESTful APIs. These APIs enable the full
capacity of DCA to be leveraged from any technology capable of consuming an API.

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Mixed Mode Operation. Containerized DCAmanages mixed mode deployments on agentless and agent based resources in the datacenter. Agent based operations are performed
using existing agent based infrastructure suchas Server Automation. DCA can integrate withan external UCMDB to quickly onboard existing
infrastructure resources. Agentless resources
can also be imported directly into DCA using
orchestration workflows.
Server Automation Integration. DCA can beintegrated with Server Automation to discoverexisting resources and resource groups underSA management. Once resources are discovered, DCA discovers the OS deployed on theresources. From there, the full range of DCA
capabilities and operations can be performedon these resources. Quickly identify SA managed resources on DCA dashboards and resource lists.

Key Features■ Static and dynamic patch polices with SLObased scan and remediation actions andexception management features■ Comprehensive out-of-the-box compliance
content for the most popular IT, regulatory,
and security compliance benchmarks■ Risk and compliance dashboards for quick

assessment of the current state of the datacenter■ Integration with OpenText Operations Bridge
Manager to further assess the businessservice-level impact of vulnerabilities■ DCA COSO Reporting powered by the ITOM

Reporting service provides business value
dashboards or the ability to bring your own BI tool

■ Containerized deployment option for easier,in-place upgrades■ Policy extension workflows allow for customized,end-to-end patch, compliance, and provisioning
processes■ REST APIs allow DCA functionality to be calledfrom third-party tools that can consume APIs

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DCA Suite Features and Capabilities
Security Patching
Patch scan, discovery, and remediation

DCA ExpressPatch

DCA Premium+ Compliance

X

X

Vulnerability scoring and risk dashboard

X

X

SLO-based patching to prevent breaches

X

X

IT Compliance
Compliance scan, discovery, and remediation

X

Compliance dashboard

X

SLO-based compliance management to always meet SLAs

X

Provisioning, Configuration Drift, Global Shell

X

Other Features
Streamline infrastructure operations through orchestration

Patching
Orchestration

Infrastructure
Orchestration

Real-time & historical reporting (COSO based)

X

X

Puppet integration—manage patch & compliance centrally

X

X

Host connectivity via agent

X

X

Host connectivity—agentlessXX

For a complete list of supported devices, systems, and applications please visit:
Data Center Automation Documentation

260-000156-002 | O | 01/24 | © 2024 Open Text

Learn more at
www.microfocus.com/DCA
www.opentext.com