Download this guide to find out the top 10 commonly performed IT activities you can easily automate to increase efficiency and free up resources.

1. 10 Time-consuming
IT Tasks you should
Automate Today!
..and free up your scarce resources

2. Introduction
Quite often, IT automation is feared with the notion that it’s
complex, requires resources and large investments.
The solution is simply to start small – gain quick wins in
automating repetitive tasks, before expanding automation
into more complex processes. In this eBook we assembled
10 IT tasks that you should easily automate to free up
resources and launch new IT process automation projects.
Enjoy,
Ayehu’s Founder and CEO
il.linkedin.com/in/gabbynizri
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3. Table of Contents
1/ Password Resets/Unlock Accounts 5
2/ Free up server disk space 6
3/ Shutdown remote computers 7
4/ Monitor Files and Folders 8
5/ Restart Windows services 9
6/ Automate SQL Queries 10
7/ Change service account password 11
8/ Monitor Windows Event Logs 12
9/ Automate VMware tasks 13
10/ Incident Escalation Process 14
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4. 1 Password Resets/Unlock
Accounts/Change Passwords
How much time does your IT team
(and Help Desk group) spend on
Active Directory password resets and
locked accounts? This can sum-up to According
tens of hours on a weekly basis, to the Burton Group,
depending on the company size password management
and number of user requests.
can cost $250 per
Frequent password resets, user, per year.
coupled with a complex
password policy, lead to
repeated account lockouts.
In some cases, IT support personnel
handle password reset calls for almost
40% of their working day. The
procedure for each call includes phone
authentication, execution of reset,
confirmation, and documenting the
call closure.
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5. 1 Password Resets/Unlock
Accounts/Change Passwords
Automating password
reset alone can drop
helpdesk queries by
more than 30%
The automated alternative: An automated workflow
that handles the entire process. Users initiate the
resolution through a self service portal. The workflow
then reset the password or unlocks the account and
sends it back to users. Optionally, it may first request a
staff confirmation via SMS.
The results of such process reduce support calls and
reduce end-user downtime. Admins can view and
control user actions, and have more time to focus on
more valuable tasks.
See the ‘Active Directory reset
password’ workflow in action
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6. 2 Free Up Server Disk Space
One of the most frequent causes of
unscheduled downtime for
applications is a critical disk space
shortfalls. In fact, insufficient disk
space on one of your SQL Servers, IIS
applications, or Exchange can be
more disruptive than any other
system or network failure.
Disk Space is
A simple issue, such as fast-growing
probably on every
log files that consume disk space, can IT or system
cause a server to crash. If such a administrator’s
simple task is neglected, it can lead task list, yet it
to an expensive downtime and hours continues to be a
of lost work. major cause of
outages.
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7. 2 Free Up Server Disk Space
Monitoring and proactively
maintaining your servers with disk
clean-up jobs is a repetitive, time-
consuming task. You can make it easy
for you by just automating it as you
wish.
The automated alternative:
An automated workflow that:
• Monitors servers for low disk space
• Archives, deletes or moves any logs
or temp files to a different location
Robots cleanup
pools
• Sends notifications about disk space
automatically.
• Can be scheduled to run on regular What about your
basis, or to be initiated based on a server disk space?
trigger
See the ‘Free up disk space’
workflow in action
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8. 3 Shutdown remote computers
Regardless whether ‘going green’ is a
social trend or not, you can take simple
actions to significantly reduce energy
consumption and cut IT
operational costs.
Ford, the US-base car manufacturer,
estimated that 60 percent of its
global employees did not shutdown
their computers at the end of a Average energy
working day. Doing so, according to savings per
Ford, would save 16,000-25,000 computer over 12
metric tones of carbon dioxide a year month period can
reach $36. Do the
and $1.2M in energy costs.
math!
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9. 3 Shutdown remote computers
The automated energy saving alternative: A workflow that
turns to standby mode all network-connected idle computers
or servers, based on rules and policies.
The switch to standby mode is preferred to a forced
shutdown, as it eliminates complications and the need for
long wait for boot up each morning.
We are saving over $2000
per day with a simple automated
workflow that switches all our PCs
to standby mode.
- IT Manager at a large bank
See the ‘Shutdown remote
computers’ workflow in action
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10. 4 Monitor Files
and Folders
Change may be a good thing for the world,
but not necessarily for the Sys admins.
How many times you had some issues
with users deleting or changing files then
claiming they never touched them?
If you have users trying to blame you for
their system errors due to file changes you
should start monitoring them now! Knowing that
a change
You need to have monitoring on your
occurred
mission critical app’ files and folders, for is important
any change or to check data integrity. But as knowing
this is not the only reason why you should who made the
do that! a hint - IT security and change in the
Compliance. first place.
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11. 4 Monitor Files
and Folders
The automated alternative: A pre-defined set of
workflows that automate daily routine tasks on
your mission-critical files and folders:
• Monitor changes, file deletion, file size, last
modified
• File parsing and data integrity
• Handle any change or errors with automated
alerts notifications and remediation tasks as
needed.
• Delete, Move, Archive, Compress files etc…
to maintain system availability
“If you don’t need it, why keep it?”
See the ‘Monitor file and folder’
workflow in action
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12. 5 Restart Services Remotely
How many times a day do
you find yourself having
to restart a service remotely
because of frequent changes
to application configuration
files, service crashes, or the
need to release system
memory?
And there is always a backup or email service that
stops working just when you are having a night out
or watching your favorite game. Once again, you
need to remotely connect to the server, restart and
check service availability, this can take a while!
Don’t you want to make this easier for you?
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13. 5 Restart Services Remotely
The automated alternative:
Setup a workflow that is either
scheduled or automatically triggered
via alert. The workflow should:
• Monitor Windows/Linux services,
backup, antivirus, spooler, email,
app services
• Diagnose and troubleshoot events
• Send an alert (email, SMS) in case
a service failed
Automating
service restart
• Perform semi-automated
can reduce risk
remediation - either restart the
and application
service automatically, or wait first downtime by
for a human decision received via 90%!
email or SMS
See how to ‘Restart services
remotely’ using a workflow
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14. 6 Automate SQL Queries
and results via email
Do you find yourself repetitively executing SQL queries
to extract data for IT and business use and then
emailing the results?
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could automate this process?
Instead of you or a DBA becoming a bottleneck for
simple, but time-consuming data
retrievals in a variety of
use cases, automation
can help you expand your
data provisioning with
faster service and even let
the users access to do that
SQL
hands-off your databases!.
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15. 6 Automate SQL Queries
and results via email
The automated alternative:
An automated workflow that connects and retrieves data
from an SQL database, generates the retrieved data to an
output in a text format or in excel file and sends it via email
or SMS to designated user.
The workflow utilizes several actions and also includes
email notification to the admin on error.
It can be either scheduled or run on-demand per user
request (via email or SMS), without the need to involve
DBA or highly skilled IT guy to do this simple task.
See how you can ‘Automate
SQL Query’ using a workflow
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16. 7 Change Service Admin
Account Password
Many Windows servers use shared
domain admin accounts to run
applications.
Security compliance regulations and
best practices suggest that
administrator account passwords
used by Windows services must be
changed every 30 to 90 days.
Normally, the credentials used by A typical manual
Windows services must be manually change takes about
updated for each service on every five minutes per
server. While the password update service. With 4-6
takes place, the service is essentially services per server,
off-line. this amounts to ~20
You can get this done quicker! minutes for
changing each
server manually.
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17. 7 Change Service Admin
Account Password
The automated alternative:
An automated workflow that: Automating the
• Extracts the server and service list service account
from a text file, CMDB or any other change process,
inventory) reduces time from
• Changes the service account logon minutes to
password for each of the servers and seconds, with
services zero errors and
• Restarts the service as needed meets regulation
and compliance.
• Documents the process and sends
reports
• It notifies upon success or failure of
password change
See how you can ‘Change
Service Account Password’
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18. 8 Monitor Windows Event Logs
You are probably aware of the fact that
at least 70% of security events
that cause enterprises losses
involve inside users.
The Windows system generates
log data throughout its operation,
so that if there's a problem with your
Windows system, it is probably listed
in the Event Log.
The problem is that manually tracking Monitoring event
logs can alert you
issues across all Windows event logs
on security threats,
can take time to find and troubleshoot. system or app
Don’t wait, start automate! failure, create audit
reports that saves
you a lot of time
finding historical
information
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19. 8 Monitor Windows Event Logs
The automated alternative:
An automated process that parses the Windows
event logs (application, security, system etc…)
and alerts about critical events of mission-critical
applications like Exchange, IIS, MS-SQL.
The process will trigger an alert to notify the
relevant person who can instantly respond to the
event and take action with no delays.
The process will also document every step in the
workflow for future investigation and statistical
reports.
This process doesn’t have to be executed using
any agent install on your machine, simply allow
WMI on your remote server.
See the ‘Monitor Windows
event logs’ workflow in action
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20. 9 Automate VMware Tasks –
Create Snapshots
Automating VMware tasks using
scripting tools is possible but requires
highly skilled personnel. Scripting
tasks such as VM provisioning,
deployment, creating snapshots and
so on… might be more complicated
than seems at first.
A VM snapshot is a copy of the VM
disk file (VMDK) at a certain point in Making Risky
time. It preserves the file system and Changes
system memory of your VM by If you plan to make risky
changes in a VM, testing
enabling you to revert to that new software, take a
snapshot in case something goes snapshot before you
wrong. begin to make those
risky changes.
Snapshots can be real lifesavers when
upgrading or patching applications or
servers.
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21. 9 Automate VMware Tasks –
Create Snapshots
So no matter if you are a newbie or
PowerCLI expert, you better start
Remember:
automating this task: Snapshots can grow
Start with creating a policy for VMware
quite quick . As
snapshots are
snapshot. Then design a process that stored on the same
creates and/or deletes snapshots. volume as the VM,
the potential is
The workflow process will be triggered there to run out of
based on your backup policy and will: space quick. You
• Read a list of target virtual machines should monitor for
disk size and delete
• Create a snapshot for each selected old snapshots as
VM server in the list needed.
• Delete snapshots so you keep space
for new ones. make sure this task
follows the VMware snapshots best
practice
See the ‘Create VMware
snapshots’ workflow in action
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22. Incident Escalation Process
10
It’s 7am and the phones are ringing in
the IT department. The email system is
down, and everyone from the CEO to
the secretary is calling to say there’s a
problem.
Thanks to monitoring system, IT already
noticed that something was wrong – but
the number of calls clarifies the impact When you don’t
of the problem. have escalation
process in place,
Because email is a mission-critical
minor incidents
system at your company, if the Level 1
can turn into a
support engineer cannot fix the problem
major outage
quickly within the SLA, an escalation
and long
process should kick in.
nightmare!
IT departments, Help Desks, NOC team
must have escalation processes in place
at least for the mission-critical system
failures.
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23. Incident Escalation Process
10
The automated alternative:
You should have an automated process An escalation
that includes the following steps: process is a
formal process for
• Automatically captures alert from addressing IT
monitoring system issues and
• Notifies L1 to identify the issue problems when
severity and priority and attempt to they arise.
resolve it within the SLA
• If problem is not resolved, escalate
to L2, to fix the problem or escalate
up to L3.
• Close loop, update ticket, and notify
relevant personnel about status and
closure of that incident.
Learn more about ‘Incident
escalate Incidents’ process
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24. Automate Your
Time-consuming tasks
Automate repetitive IT
tasks in less than 5 minutes
with pre-defined templates
that can be customized
easily to your needs.
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