Develop an IT Infrastructure Services Playbook

Automation, SDI, and DevOps – build a cheat sheet to manage a changing Infrastructure & Operations environment.

Table of contents

Analyst Perspective

Executive Summary

Project Overview

• Phase 1: Define and Prioritize Infrastructure Services
  • 1.1: Define the services you own
  • 1.2: Prioritize infrastructure services
• Phase 2: Build Workflows and an Infrastructure Services Playbook
  • 2.1: Design workflow for service delivery
  • 2.2: Build a services playbook
• Phase 3: Identify Costs and Mature Service Delivery Capabilities
  • 3.1: Eliminate infrastructure service costs
  • 3.2: Mature your I&O organization into a service broker

Summary and Conclusion

ANALYST PERSPECTIVE

Technology is changing how infrastructure services are delivered.

"Managing a hybrid infrastructure environment is challenge enough. Add to this the pressure on IT Operations to deliver services faster and more continuously – it’s a recipe for boondoggle deployments, overcommitted staff, end-user frustration, and operational gridlock.

It’s not every service you provide that causes problems, so prioritize a few in-demand, painful services. Build and maintain durable, flexible processes that enable your team to provide consistent, repeatable services at a standard cost. Identify opportunities to improve service delivery.

You’ll save the business time and money and your own team significant grief." (Andrew Sharp, Research Manager, Infrastructure & Operations, Info-Tech Research Group)

Your infrastructure and operations team is a service provider; standardize, document, and communicate service capabilities

This Research is Designed For:

• CTOs and Infrastructure Managers
• Service Level Managers
• ITSM Managers and Process Owners

This Research Will Help You:

• Inventory services that IT Infrastructure & Operations (I&O) provides to the business (servers, storage, and network).
• Standardize services and track costs.
• Articulate the value of these services to business owners.
• Develop a catalog of infrastructure services.

This Research Will Also Assist:

• CIOs
• Application Development Managers
• Security Managers
• Auditors

This Research Will Help Them:

• Understand the complexities of technical service delivery.
• Make better strategic IT infrastructure decisions.

Executive summary

Situation

• Infrastructure and operations teams are managing deployments on- and off-premises and across multiple infrastructure service providers.
• Though automation tools speed up the delivery process, documentation is always pushed off so the team can meet urgent deadlines.

Complication

• Cloud providers have set the bar high for ease of access to stable infrastructure services.
• Without documented delivery processes, wait times are longer, controls are adequate but ad hoc, builds are non-standard, and errors are more likely to be introduced in production.

Resolution

• Prioritize in-demand services for documentation and standardization.
• Build service workflows and document service requirements in the services playbook.
• Create a costing model and track costs to deliver defined services.
• Leverage data on costs and service requirements to improve service delivery.

Info-Tech Insight

1. Keep it simple. Work through a few in-demand services to get early value from the project.
2. Don’t get lost in automation or tooling. You don’t need a complex tool or back-end automation to get value from standardized services.
3. Do then iterate. With a few completed service processes, it’s much easier to identify opportunities for service automation.

Create an infrastructure services playbook to improve efficiency, support DevOps, and streamline service delivery

Begin building an infrastructure services playbook by defining the services you provide. This will also help your team support changes to service delivery (e.g. more use of cloud services and the shift to DevOps).

In this blueprint, the first step will be to document infrastructure services to:

1. Clarify infrastructure capabilities and achievable service levels.

   Document infrastructure services to clarify achievable service levels with given resources and what you will need to meet service-level requirement gaps. Establishing your ability to meet customer demands is the first step toward becoming a broker of internal or external services.

2. Standardize infrastructure service delivery.

   Sometimes, it’s extremely important to do the exact same thing every time (e.g. server hardening). Sometimes, your team needs room to deviate from the script. Create a playbook that allows you to standardize service delivery as needed.

3. Make good strategic infrastructure decisions.

   Knowledge is power. Defined services and capabilities will help you make important strategic infrastructure decisions around capacity planning and when outsourcing is appropriate.

Review and optimize infrastructure service delivery as you shift to more cloud-based services

If you can’t standardize and streamline how you support cloud services, you risk AppDev and business leaders circumventing the I&O team.

	Example: Create a new server resource in a virtual environment vs. public cloud In a virtualized environment, provisioning processes can still be relatively siloed. In a software-defined environment, many steps require knowledge across the infrastructure stack. Better documentation will help your team deliver services outside their area of specialty.
Identify CPU requirements for a virtual machine (VM) Calculate VM memory requirements Configure the floppy drive for a VM Configure IDE devices for a VM Configure SCSI adapters for a VM Configure network adapters for a VM Configure VM priority for host CPU resources Server is live		Complete SDI code development & review, version control, build status, etc. Identify software and specifications for the instance you want to use Review configuration, storage, and security settings Secure the instance with an existing key pair or create a new key pair Update documentation – public IP address, physical & logical connections, data flows, etc. Launch and connect to instance Server is live

Strengthen DevOps with an infrastructure playbook

The purpose behind DevOps is to reduce friction and deliver faster, more continuous, more automated services through the use of cross-functional teams.

DevOps: bridging Applications Development and Infrastructure & Operations by embracing a culture, practices, and tools born out of Lean and Agile methodologies.

• Create a common language across functions.
• Ensure that all service steps are documented.
• Move towards more standard deployments.
• Increase transparency within the IT department.
• Cultivate trust across teams.
• Build the foundation for automated services.

"The bar has been raised for delivering technology products and services – what was good enough in previous decades is not good enough now." (Kim, Humble, Debois, Willis (2016))

Leverage an infrastructure services playbook to improve service delivery, one step at a time

Crawl Prioritize infrastructure services that are good candidates for standardization. Document the steps and requirements to deliver the service. Use the playbook and workflows internally as you gather requirements and deliver on requests. Track costs internally.	Walk Provide infrastructure clients with the playbook and allow them to make requests against it. Update and maintain existing documentation. Automate, where possible. Showback costs to the business.	Run Provide infrastructure customers with scripts to provision infrastructure resources. Audit requests before fulfilling them. Chargeback costs, as needed.

Focus on in-demand infrastructure services — PHASE 1

Standardize in-demand, repeatable services first.

Demand for infrastructure services is usually driven by external requests or operational requirements. Prioritize services based on criticality, durability, frequency, availability, and urgency requirements.

Scheduling Delays

• Dealing with a slew of capital projects driven by a major funding initiative, the IT team of a major US transit system is struggling to execute on basic operational tasks.

Action:
• A brainstorming and prioritization exercise identifies web server deployment as their most in-demand service.
• Identifying breakdowns in web server deployment helps free up resources for other tasks and addresses a serious pain point.

Think outside the box

• On a new project for a sporting goods client, the IT department for a marketing firm deploys and supports a “locker” kiosk that users engage with for a chance to win a gift.

Action:
• As the campaign proves successful, the I&O Manager creates a playbook to guide kiosk support and deployment in the future, including required skills, timelines, success metrics, and costs.

Keep it standard, keep it safe

• An IT audit at a higher education institution finds that no standard process for server hardening has been defined or documented by the infrastructure team.

Action:
• Improving IT security is a strategic priority for the department.
• The infrastructure team decides to standardize and document processes, guidelines, and configurations for hardening OS, SCCM, SaltStack, scripting, and patching.

Leverage service workflows to populate the playbook — PHASE 2

Infrastructure as Code is breaking down traditional infrastructure silos and support models.

1. Document the workflow to deliver the service. Identify pain points and target broken processes first.
   Provision –› Configure –› Run –› Quiesce –› Destroy
2. Define logical expected results and metrics for problematic steps in the process. Identify challenges and possible improvements to each problematic step.
   

   Building and deploying toolsets is taking a long time
   Start Create a baseline offering for common requests. Make clear that non-standard requests will take time to fulfil.	Stop Move to just one web server.	Continue Use weekly drop-ins to communicate the change.

3. Document skills and roles, approvers, and pre-requirements to fill out the documentation, as needed. Use the documented process to guide internal process and align with external expectations.

Cross-silo knowledge is needed: In a software-defined environment, building and launching a new server requires knowledge across the stack.

• Complete SDI code development & review, version control, build status, etc.
• Identify software and specifications for the instance you want to use
• Review configuration, storage, and security settings
• Secure the instance with an existing key pair, or create a new key pair
• Update documentation – public IP address, physical & logical connections, data flows, etc.
• Launch and connect to the instance

Server is live

Take a progressive approach to cost tracking — PHASE 3

Infrastructure & Operations are bound by two metrics:

1. Are systems up?
2. Is technology delivered as efficiently as possible?

Because tracking cost is integral to efficiency, cost and budget management, by proxy, is one of the most important Infrastructure & Operations metrics.

Cost management is not a numbers game. It is an indicator of how well infrastructure is managed.

Track costs in a practical way that delivers value to your organization:

1. Build and leverage an internal rate sheet to help estimate cost to serve.
2. Showback rate sheet to help managers and architects make better infrastructure decisions.
3. Chargeback costs to defined cost centers.

Project overview

Use Info-Tech’s methodology to get value faster from your infrastructure services playbook.

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Guided Implementation Overview

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Your Guided Implementation will pair you with an advisor from our analyst team for the duration of your infrastructure services project.

Workshop Overview

Develop an IT Infrastructure Services Playbook

PHASE 1

Define and Prioritize Infrastructure Services

Step 1.1: Define the services you own

This step will walk you through the following activities:

• Define “infrastructure service”
• Brainstorm service offerings
• Consolidate services with affinity map

This step involves the following participants:

• Infrastructure Manager
• I&O SMEs

Results & Insights

• Results: Consolidated list of end-to-end services
• Insights: Avoid analysis paralysis by brainstorming without restrictions. It is more effective to cut down in Step 1.2 rather than risk neglecting important services for the playbook.

Consider a range of infrastructure services

Your infrastructure team is a service provider to the applications team – and sometimes other users as well.

Service Requests

• A developer requests a new web server.
• The marketing department asks for a database to support a six-month digital marketing campaign.

Projects

• A new service is promoted to production.

Operations

• Firewall rules are updated to support server, network, or security posture changes.
• Standard practices are followed and maintained to harden a range of different operating systems.
• Engineers follow a standard process to integrate new tools and entitlements into Active Directory.
• Patches and firmware updates are applied to core infrastructure components as needed.

Problems

• A database batch job often breaks on overnight batch jobs and requires manual intervention to check and restart.

IT infrastructure & operations teams deliver services that fulfil requests, support projects, resolve problems, and operate systems.