Everything You Need to Know When Considering a Move to the New Automic SaaS

Looking for an on-premises solution without the administrative burden of managing an on-premises platform? Welcome to Automic SaaS.

With Automic SaaS, customers get the full power of the Automic Automation on-premises solution without the hassle of managing an on-prem platform. Here, we’ll look at the benefits of Automic SaaS and what administrators can expect when working with the solution.

Advantages of Automic SaaS

With Automic SaaS, organizations get the advanced capabilities of Automic Automation and the benefits of SaaS delivery. Automic SaaS frees customers from the responsibility of deploying, maintaining, and supporting the infrastructure associated with the Automic solution. In this way, the solution dramatically reduces administrative workload and frees up team members to spend more time delivering value to the business.

SaaS delivery, same functionality

Whether you use the conventional on-premises version, the Kubernetes Edition, or this new SaaS release, you get the same advanced capabilities. Anything you can do with Automic on-premises, you can do with Automic SaaS.

Broadcom manages complete infrastructure

The Automation Engine, application, database, and Automic Web Interface (AWI) run on the Google Cloud Platform. Broadcom manages updates, backups, database maintenance, and security patches. Broadcom ensures the availability, scalability, and resilience of our customers’ workload automation.

Customers continue to run their workloads as-is, ensuring business continuity in their existing hybrid-cloud agent environment.

Automic SaaS cloud architecture

Automic SaaS is hosted in Google Cloud Platform, within dedicated data centers across the United States and Europe. Within the SaaS environment, there are two main spaces — one managed by Broadcom, and the other controlled by the customer. Here’s more on the elements and attributes of each space:

Broadcom-managed capabilities

Broadcom manages two instances: one for production, and one for non-production. Each instance is named to distinguish between the two. Broadcom offers three types of secure endpoints for accessing the system: JCP, REST, and AWI.

Automic SaaS provides a TLS certificate signed by a public certificate authority, which is trusted by most systems. This means customers don’t have to distribute, configure, or update certificates.

Here are the service components:

• Automation engine, hosted in Kubernetes cluster
• Databases and database utilities
• Client 0, which is used to enable authentication

Customer-managed capabilities

Customers manage hosting agents. Customers can submit a service request to Broadcom support to add new clients (other than client 0).

Transition considerations

While the functionality is the same as on-premise Automic Automation, the scope of responsibilities involved with managing Automic SaaS is very different. Fundamentally, Automic SaaS substantially reduces the solution components that customers have to deploy and maintain. In the following sections, we provide a look at various elements in the environment and highlight how the SaaS solution differs from an on-premises implementation.

Agents

In both on-premises and SaaS solutions, customers have complete control over agents. There are two types of agents:

• TLS agents. These agents have been available since v21.
• Legacy GSS agents. These agents are not TLS enabled. Because all agent connections in the SaaS environment must be established via JCP, GSS agents will require the TLS gateway to bridge communications between the agent and the endpoint.

Java requirement

All systems hosting agents require Java for two reasons:

• To support TLS-specific encryption and authentication.
• To accommodate Linux and Windows agents supported in v24.

Backend infrastructure

As outlined above, the customer manages the administration of the infrastructure supporting the Automation Engine, database, utilities, and AWI in the on-premises version. With Automic SaaS, this is managed by Broadcom.

Administration

With Automic on-premises, teams have unrestricted administrative privileges and responsibilities for the entire infrastructure, including client 0. That’s no longer the case with Automic SaaS. Administrators are freed from infrastructure maintenance, but can still perform tasks like creating and managing agents, adding objects shared between clients or templates, and making configurations required for user authentication.  

Broadcom is responsible for system maintenance, redundancy, and performance. Consequently, administrative tasks that have a system impact, like performing upgrades, are not needed or allowed. To make changes to client 0, teams would need to make a service request.

Databases

With the on-premises version of Automic, customers can use several different databases, including Oracle, SQL Server, and PostgreSQL. With the SaaS version, the database is fully managed by Broadcom and is transparent to the user. In the cloud, Broadcom uses the PostgreSQL database.

Legacy Java API

If your organization is running Automic on premises and you have apps using the legacy Java API, those apps will need to be refactored for TLS and connect via the JCP HTTPS endpoint to run with Automic SaaS.

Options for moving existing workloads to Automic SaaS

There are two options for moving existing workloads to Automation SaaS:

• XML Export/Import via AWI
• Submitting a Transport Case via Broadcom Support

User management

User management can be handled natively in both on-premises and SaaS models. However, to ensure the proper functioning of the Automic SaaS system, certain changes to client 0 are not allowed. If customers require additional configuration changes that they’re not permitted to do themselves, they can make a service request.

Multiple clients

In both models, it’s possible to create multiple clients.

Simple, flexible agent deployment

With Automic SaaS, customers have flexible agent deployment options. Already-existing agents can be reconfigured to connect to Automic SaaS. Teams can deploy agents on-premises, in the cloud, or in containers. In addition, the solution features support for new Java OS agents for Windows and Linux.

Automic SaaS features preconfigured deployment packages. With these packages, customers can easily download and deploy new agents without any configuration.

These packages feature an INI file that comes preconfigured. Here are the basic steps for agent installation:

• Log into client 0
• Create agent in AWI and download
• Install agent
• Start agent
• Authenticate agent in AWI
• Test

Conclusion

With Automic SaaS, customers can now harness the advanced, industry-leading workload automation capabilities of Automic Automation without the cost and effort of running and supporting the solution on-premises. Automic SaaS offers all the functionality of the on-premises version, and the process of moving to Automic SaaS is seamless.

To learn more about the technical aspects of Automic SaaS and see a demonstration of the agent installation process, be sure to view our Getting Starting with Automic SaaS webinar.