Unicenter Autosys Job Management
Unicenter Autosys Job Management is a workload automation (aka job scheduling) tool supplied by Computer Associates. The name of the product has gone through various iterations; as of release r11.3 it will be known as "CA Workload Automation AE", the AE part referring to AutoSys Engine (there are other CA Workload Automation tools that have other suffixes).
The Application Servers and Schedulers are supported on: Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Linux and Windows servers.
Clients (Remote Agents) can be run on Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Windows, z/OS, OS/390, zSeries, VSE, and OpenVMS.
Contents:
1 History
2 Product Timeline
3 Components
3.1 Scheduler
3.2 Application Server
3.3 Event Server
3.4 WCC
3.5 Remote Agent
3.6 eEEM (aka eIAM)
3.7 Common components
4 Versions
5 R11 criticism
6 User groups and community
History
AutoSys was first developed by William Arntz and Walter Goodwin who created AutoSystems Corp to market it. They had partnered with and were guided by Frederick Lenz during the inception, development and ultimately the marketing of the product. It was eventually sold to Platinum Technology International in 1995 (one of many systems management companies acquired by Platinum Technology that year[1]). Platinum invested in new features and functionality including the Xpert and JobVision modules[2] . In May 1999, Platinum was itself acquired by Computer Associates (CA) for 3.5 billion U.S. dollars, at that time the largest transaction in the history of the software industry.[3] CA offered $29.25 per share, almost a three-to-one premium over Platinum's stock price of $9.875.[4] In 2006 CA was the subject of intense media scrutiny as it became clear that a $2.2 billion accounting fraud had been orchestrated by chief executive Sanjay Kumar[5]; however the popularity of the AutoSys product remained unaffected.
William Arntz later became Producer, Director, Screenwriter, President at Captured Light, makers of cult film "What the Bleep Do We Know!?".[6] Walter Goodwin became founder and CEO of Stirling Systems Group, LLC and later Terma Software Labs .[7]
Unicenter Autosys Job Management
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Product Timeline
* 1992 Version 1 released by AutoSystems
* 1993 Version 2 released
* 1994 Version 3.1 released
* 1997 AutoSystems acquired by Platinum
* 1997 Version 3.3 released
* 1998 Version 3.4 released the first Windows agent
* 2000 Version 3.5 released the first Linux agent
* 2002 Version 4.0 released includes multiple event demons
* 2004 Version 4.5 released includes eTrust Access Control
* 2007 Version 11.0 released includes multi-threaded scheduler process and DataBase free agent.
* 2010 Version 11.3 released includes d-Series agent technology.
Components
The AutoSys r11 architecture is a 3-tier architecture consisting of Client utilities, Application Server(s) / Scheduler Server(s) and Database(s). This architecture is a new concept for AutoSys and provides performance and scalability improvements when compared to previous releases. A SDK has been included with AutoSys r11 allowing in-house code to connect to the Application Server(s) in the same way as the supplied client (agent and interface) components.
Scheduler
Replaces the Event Processor. A multi-threaded process which selects events from the Event Server and processes them. Changes from 4.5 include multiple event batching and dynamic thread creation.Application Server
A new component which handles the Database connectivity for the AutoSys r11 clients, Command Line Utilities and the GUIs. It has a persistent connection to the DB to allow improved response speed. It also removes the requirement of having a global database user/password.Event Server
The DB containing the events. Differences from 4.5 include vendor library files for the Server and client components.WCC
The default user interface for AutoSys is Workload Command Centre (WCC). It consists of a number of applets that provide job management:* Job Editor
* Job Status Console
* Job Flow Design
* Job Flow Monitoring
* Event Console
* Reporting
* JAWS (3rd party reporting tool)
Remote Agent
The Remote Agent is now a persistent process on all Operating Systems. It no longer connects directly to the back end AutoSys database(s), but instead sends all updates through the Application Server component. The makes the Agent database and instance agnostic.eEEM (aka eIAM)
eTrust Embedded Entitlements Manager is the replacement of the eTrust Access Control component seen in version 4.5. eEEM is a cut down version of eAC and is aimed at a single application access control point rather than a system based tool. It allows user and group access to AutoSys and WCC resources via an ACL administered GUI, access can be granted or denied based upon filters and groups or managed explicitly.Common components
Several components used by AutoSys are shared with other CA products (e.g. CA NSM or CA Audit) and are stored in a common folder.Versions
As of 05/06/2010, the most current version of the above components:
* AutoSys: r11 SP3 Incremental 1
* Common Components: r11.2.5
* EEM: 8.4 SR02
* WCC: r11.1 SP2
It is important to note exact versions when dealing with the product and CA-Support. For example, there is a world of difference between WCC r11.0 and WCC r11.1 sp1.
The current version has been GA since November 2007. This version comes with eIAM (Embedded Identity and Access management) security management module to secure access to scheduling resources.
The next version, known as r11.3, is expected in Q3 2010. r11.3 will herald the integration of the intelligent agents acquired with the Cybermation scheduling product (which will include, amongst other things; FTP, Database and Java job types). After r11.3, r11.5 will follow. r11.5 is discussed in IDC's "The Evolution of Job Scheduling: CA's Approach to Workload Automation" by Tim Grieser.[8]
R11 criticism
AutoSys r11 has been criticised in various user forums for a number of reasons. The delay in releasing the product was seen by some as a lack of investment by CA in one of their core products. Since its release the stability of r11 has been questioned, particularly in the Unix hosted versions. It's known some customers have been forced to postpone their deployment of r11 until these issues have been corrected and deployed on the other sites. One customer explained in Feb 2009 that his company "had huge issues upgrading to r11" in a (otherwise complimentary) blog in February 2009.[9]
