Provision Databases Easier with Nutanix Era & ServiceNow

Provisioning new databases and cloning database requests make up a hefty portion of a database administrator’s (DBAs) workload. As reported in Forrester’s Total Economic Impact survey for Nutanix Era, database provisioning is time consuming, tedious, and often requires additional approvals for new systems to support the new provision. DBAs reported that “to handle the capacity of existing database management and incoming requests, the DBA teams often needed to work overtime and weekends” (Forrester p7). As one respondent noted: “We get requests for new databases all the time, but we have to have a server before we can even start. Our database and operations teams were resource-constrained, and a request could take up to two weeks to deliver. That was just too long” (Forrester p7).

The Forrester study also noted that many organizations lack standard workflow procedures that can streamline the provisioning process for more effective procedures in database provisioning. Surveyed customers commented that, when workflow best practices are applied holistically across several different database types, common provisioning mistakes could be avoided.

Nutanix has partnered with ServiceNow, Inc. to integrate Nutanix Era™ into the ServiceNow® platform. Using the ServiceNow Nutanix Era Plugin for Database Management, Era and ServiceNow customers can use standard workflow processes to ease database provisioning even further.

Nutanix Era can increase database provisioning by 97% through its one-click database management and control plane as noted in Forrester’s TEI report for Era. This process can be streamlined even further through the integration with ServiceNow’s digital workflow processes.

Here are just a few use cases:

• A ticket is generated with a request for a new database needing to be provisioned for a new online app. Using the ServiceNow integration approval workflows, the request ticket is entered into ServiceNow and automatically generates the approval workflow processes. Once approvals are met, ServiceNow triggers Nutanix Era to start the provisioning without any manual intervention.
• Using the ServiceNow Era plugin to remove an unwanted database. The Era ServiceNow plugin allows authorized administrators to remove provisioned databases and database clones. The plugin deletes the database, the database server VM, and the Era time machine that is associated with the database. Once the database clone is removed, Era’s UI reflects these changes.

The ServiceNow Nutanix Era Plugin for Database Management is now available from the ServiceNow plugin store. For more information on the ServiceNow plugin, please read Magnus Andersson’s blog or watch his demonstration video. Magnus is a Principal Solution Architect for Nutanix. To learn more about Era’s one-click, end-to-end database lifecycle management, anywhere take an Era test drive.