Orchestration

When you’ve transformed your datacenter into one that’s virtualised and software-defined, the enabler is a front-end orchestration interface. Orchestration is about having a single, consolidated and easy to use interface that lets you provision databases, apps, and app stack components on any server or cloud — on-premise, private, public, or hybrid — within seconds. And it’s being able to do this using non-specialist IT resources.

Often called a single pane of glass interface, the orchestration layer also delivers app & database provisioning, auto­ scaling, back up & recovery, logging and monitoring, utilising any underlying infrastructure.

It reduces the time and effort for deploying multiple instances of a single application, and as the requirement for more resources or a new application is triggered, automated tools can perform tasks that previously could only be done by multiple specialist administrators operating on their individual pieces of the physical stack.

Orchestration also provides centralised management of the resource pool, including billing, metering, and chargeback for consumption. This management can also define and control policies and service levels through automated workflows, provisioning, and change management. This creates an application-aligned infrastructure that can be scaled up or down based on the needs of each application.