RES Wisdom - Run Book Automation for Windows
 RES Wisdom 2007 run book automation for Windows allows you to deliver any set of changes to Microsoft Windows workstations and servers and automates provisioning of your IT resources, all from a single console. Complex and unique changes to your Windows computers can be automated into jobs to ensure that your computers are kept in optimal shape. Jobs can also automate the provisioning of resources to end-users; a recurring and daily change. Any combination of RES Wisdom jobs can be combined into run books with the benefit of improved IT productivity and a reduced time to deliver.
Maintenance
Microsoft Windows workstations and servers are kept up-to date by automating unique and complex changes. A broad selection of queries provides several types of information about Microsoft Windows computers. These queries can be combined with tasks that, for example, can be based on the results of that query. Daily tasks that are supported by RES Wisdom include applying software updates, changing configuration and updating security settings.
Jobs in RES Wisdom enable an IT administrator to perform (a combination of) tasks/queries on a (combination of) Microsoft Windows workstations and servers at a specific time. This provides complete control over IT changes for the enterprise and that the right changes are rolled out consistently across the network to the right computers.
Provisioning
Users need to have the right resources available at the right time and location. Using RES Wisdom 2009, IT administrators can automatically provision the right resources to end-users. Recurring changes like the provisioning Windows accounts, virtual machines, mail accounts, applications and permissions can all be automated into jobs to ensure that end-users have the right resources available at the right time and the right place.
Automation
Automation of IT changes saves valuable time and ensures the smooth running of the business.
Job Scheduling automates jobs to be scheduled to run immediately, or schedules at a specific time, for example at night or during weekends when network traffic is at its lowest. Recurring jobs can be scheduled for recurring maintenance operations or to be run after specific events such as a boot. This enables you to tailor the jobs to your specific needs: if a maintenance task needs to be executed immediately you can schedule it to run at once, but you can also set-up an entire automated structure for your regular maintenance tasks such as defragmentation or disk space queries.
Team Jobs allows jobs to be scheduled for automatic execution on agents that are added to a team or on agents that are removed from a team. This is supported for both explicit and rule based team members. Jobs for new team members are typically used to add new functionality to a computer. Jobs for removed team members are typically used to remove old functionality from a computer.
Run books combine several jobs to further automate IT. Any combination of maintenance jobs and provisioning jobs can be chained into one single run book to automate complex sequences of changes across a combination of Microsoft Windows workstations and servers.
Automation features in RES Wisdom 2009 reduce management complexity and are unique timesaving solutions for IT administrators.
Administration
Powerful administration features in RES Wisdom 2009 reduces the complexity and time involved in administrating your Microsoft Windows environment.
Delegation in RES Wisdom 2009 offers the ability to easily delegate controlled responsibilities with associated security permissions within a RES Wisdom environment. This means that the right administration tasks can be assigned to the right person or group in a controlled fashion.
For example, the Helpdesk can be given specific rights to perform specific actions, such as restarting a computer’s print spooler, allowing the IT administrator to concentrate on more urgent tasks. This function provides a secure way to delivers any set of changes to computers and automating provisioning of IT resources, saving time and thus aiding productivity.
Microsoft Windows workstations and servers running a RES Windows 2009 agent can be grouped into teams, based on, for example, location, machine type, Operating System and so on. This is a very convenient way to maintain specific parts of the organization. For example, all Microsoft Exchange servers can be grouped into one specific team to allow for easy automation of changes for this group of servers specifically.
Building Blocks eliminate the need for complex scripts when you need to transport data for resources, modules and projects from one RES Wisdom environment to another. You can now achieve the same results in a few clicks. Building Blocks (XML files) are reusable blocks of data that you can easily modify or generate manually, and which can be used as predefined Building Blocks in new environments. Reusing Building Blocks gives you predictable results based on best practices. This powerful feature of RES Wisdom 2009 further reduces management complexity and is a unique timesaving solution for administrators.
Integration
Tight integration with RES PowerFuse and RES Orchestra provide the advantage of delivering any set of changes to computers and automate provisioning of IT resources in combination with user workspace management and IT service delivery.
A powerful and unique technology in RES Wisdom 2009 is Snapshot Intelligence™. Patent pending Snapshot Intelligence™ detects applied snapshot on a workload image and will automatically reflect the actual change history of the image. Snapshot Intelligence also provides feedback about when snapshots were used.
With Snapshot Intelligence™ an IT administrator can revert a computer to a previous (stable) state, eliminating the normal downside of inconsistency between the actual computer state and any tracked change history in a database as a result of reverting to a snapshot.
A more advanced use of Snapshot Intelligence is the ability to show obsolete change sets after reverting to a snapshot. This allows an IT administrator to reapply a change set of choice, critically important when designing and testing changes in a virtual infrastructure. Snapshot Intelligence furthermore automatically reapplies the last used change set. This is essential when applying changes to a standard workload image combined with on-demand streaming. Normally these changes would be lost after rebooting the server because the standard workload image would be reapplied by the use of on-demand streaming.
Using Snapshot Intelligence in RES Wisdom 2009, IT administrators can reapply the last obsolete change set resulting in semi-permanent changes without having to modify the standard image. The advantage of using Snapshot Intelligence is that the number of gold images and maintenance of gold images can be kept to a minimum while maintaining a consistent change history.
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