I worked 3 short projects with a US-based energy company over a period of three years to develop customisations to the data pipeline to their CMDB. This was to enable a front-end form for application ownership selection. For this they needed specifically to be able to extract metadata from their IBM DB2, MSSQL, Oracle, MongoDB and MariaDB databases for promotion to the front-end display.

The solution involved custom TPL code applied to BMC Discovery, which used a combination of SQL connections of JDBC and API connectivity with MongoDB. Both Discovery and the CMDB sync connections needed to be modified to make it work.

MongoDB presented the most challenging connection as Discovery was not built for a direct integration, so the solution called for running the API retrieval queries directly on the server as it scanned, with a local encrypted text file which contained the API credentials. The output was then retrieved the normal way.

The solution allowed for the client to be able to correctly identify and assign ownership for their database dependent applications.

The post US Energy Company – CMDB Augmentation and Deep Database Architecture appeared first on fitzmoskal.

A UK non-profit organisation planned datacenter move within the next 12 months. The required an understanding of their environment, the servers, applications and storage. Their main focus was on Production, DMZ and Disaster Recovery.

A successful proof of concept had been carried out prior and they were ready for deployment of the ITAM scanning solution.

A workshop was conducted to assess their capabilities and readiness as well as determine how the solution would be deployed. This results in a Solution Design and commencement of the deployment of scanning.

The client also required modelling of their application architecture in preparation, so they could understand the dependencies for the move. As well as delivering on these requirements within a six week timeframe, I was able to provide additional value by identifying approximately 100 Windows servers that were out of compliance.

The post UK Non-profit – Datacenter Migration appeared first on fitzmoskal.

A major UK retailer was looking to perform a datacenter assessment to understand the infrastructure currently deployed within the DC and the relationships between the infrastructure. This was in preparation for a cloud migration.

The chose ITAM solution for discovering their infrastructure was BMC Discovery. The requirements included deployment, data gathering, knowledge transfer, and application architecture modelling. This was delivered over a 6-week period.

The end result was that the retailer were able to identify their application dependencies in order to plan the move and identify assets such as servers which were in decommissioned status but still live. As a value add I also provided them detailed reporting into single-point-of-failure devices (servers configured with only one switch) and valuable software lifecycle data.

The post Major Retailer – Datacenter Cloud Migration appeared first on fitzmoskal.

I was contracted to a this British Transport Company to provide consultancy services in the area of modelling approximately 60 business applications. Some of them had been modelled before but had fallen behind on maintenance and the model had drifted. Others needed to be modelled from scratch.

The method chosen by the client was to do the modelling through questionnaires to SMEs who would provide the initial seed data. This then allowed me to model the architecture for each application.

Whilst working onsite, I was asked if it was possible scan and report details of SSL certificates, as the company was having issues with certificates expiring. I quoted them work on developing a solution from scratch that would work with BMC Discovery. This was designed and implemented within 3 days, which allowed the client to save £20,000 on an anual subscription to a 3rd part piece of software.

The post British Transport Company – Business Application Modelling & SSL Certificate Discovery appeared first on fitzmoskal.

I maintained a long-term relationship with a European Investment Bank based in Canary Wharf. As part of a team of consultants we had repeat work to maintain and upgrade their ITAM solution. I personally delivered on a 3-week critical project to facilitate a database migration. This involved liaising with lead DBAs to extract metadata from MS SQL, PostgreSQL and Sybase databases for the solution architecture.

This was a sensitive project given the job threat to the existing DBA SMEs. I faced open hostility from one SME in particular who’s tactic was to delay providing information and not respond to emails.

I resolved this with face to face contact, without letting any request go unanswered. I also used low-level escalation to my project sponsor. This did result in a tactical complaint from the SME to the project board, however my sponsor was satisfied with my approach, hitting their 3-week deadline and no fault could be found. I resolved not to make matters personal, which is how I managed to stay focused on delivery.

The post Investment Bank – ITAM & DB Migration appeared first on fitzmoskal.

I was assigned as a consultant to a large Middle Eastern Oil Company for six weeks onsite. BMC Discovery was their chosen IT Asset Management solution and their objectives were to deploy, scan their networks and model various services comprised of Oracle RAC Clusters, IBM LPARs and HMCs, Databases and add 2-way CMDB synchronisataion with custom asset locations.

The deployment and solution was delivered within the six week timeframe to satisfaction of the client. In addition they were supplied with various reports as value add. In one case they were able to identify a number of database servers which had been marked as decommissioned but not physically turned off. This improved their visibility and avoided ongoing costs and risk of exploited vulnerabilities in unmonitored infrastructure.

The post Middle Eastern Oil Company – CMDB ITAM Deployment appeared first on fitzmoskal.

However I found a couple of annoyances when running it from CLI, one was in having to keep a terminal window open, the other was having to run it from it’s install directory – particularly when it comes to relative path names for kettle jobs.

So I created an alias that runs PDI in an interactive shell allowing you to run it from one a word command, and it occurred to me that this might be useful to share. Here you go:

alias spoon='sh -c '\''cd /opt/pentaho/data-integration; ./spoon.sh&'\'''

The post Spooning with Pentaho Data Integrator appeared first on fitzmoskal.