Lab Exercise 1 – Environment Planning
This lab exercise focuses on environment planning for the deployment of BigFix Runbook AI. It covers parameters such as number of tickets, unique tickets, documents processed, search queries, and concurrent executions to determine the hardware sizing required. The exercise provides hardware recommendations for a small environment and emphasizes the importance of meeting prerequisites before proceeding with the installation.
Scenario
A senior IT architect from an organization has inquired about the various deployment options and respective hardware sizing in order to prepare for the deployment of BigFix Runbook AI in their environment.
In this lab, we will discuss the categorization of environments based on various parameters enabling the user to arrive at the appropriate sizing for the hardware required for deployment of the product.
Prerequisites
User must have the following information (or else seek this information from the architect) before proceeding forward with this exercise –
Volumes of tickets created in the ITSM tool on daily, weekly and monthly basis.
Volume of unique tickets
Volumes of documents to be processed
Volume of search queries expected
Solution
There are various parameters that need to be considered for arriving at the hardware sizing as listed below:
Number of Tickets – Number of tickets raised in ITSM tool on a monthly basis
Number of Unique Tickets – Number of unique kinds of tickets created on a monthly basis
Number of Documents Processed – Number of documents / knowledge articles ingested in the system for knowledge search and analysis
Number of Search Queries – Number of search queries made by the users on a monthly basis
Concurrent Executions – Number of concurrent executions of tickets
Based on the above listed parameters, hardware sizing has been divided into three categories as mentioned in the below table –
| Environment Indicator |
# Tickets (per month) |
# Unique Tickets (per month) |
# Documents Processed** |
# Search Queries** (per month) |
Concurrent Executions*** | Data Retention* |
| Small | Less than 30,000 | Less than 500 | Less than 1,000 | Less than 5,000 | up to 100 | 6 months |
| Medium | 30,000 to 60,000 | 500 to 1,000 | 1,000 to 3,000 | 5,000 to 10,000 | up to 200 | 6 months |
| Large | 60,000 to 1,50,000 | 1,000 to 3,000 | 3,000 to 5,000 | 10,000 to 30,000 | up to 400 | 6 months |
* Data Retention is only applicable for the tickets data
** Applicable when iKnowledge module is installed
*** Concurrent Executions have been arrived at based on the limitation of the RBA tool for runbook executions and the ITSM tool for pushing tickets into BigFix Runbook AI.
For e.g., a small environment can process at most 30,000 tickets per month, at most 500 unique tickets per month, at most 1000 documents and at most 5,000 search queries. The concurrent executions are limited to 100.
For the purpose of the all the lab exercises covered in this manual, we are going to make use of Small Environment. The specifics are mentioned in the table below.
| Server Name | Server Count | Server Type | Recommended Hardware Configuration | Minimum RAM Requirement for BigFix Runbook AI | Database Requirement | Storage (local) | Other Requirements |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Application + Web Server | 1 | Virtual | 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM | 2 GB RAM | NA | 50 GB | Operating System - Windows Server 2016, 64-bit |
| Database Server | 1 | Virtual | 4 vCPU, 8 GB RAM | Not Applicable | Microsoft SQL Server 2016 - Standard Edition | 100 GB | Operating System - Windows Server 2016, 64-bit |
|
Advanced AI Server + Mongo DB + Solr |
1 | Virtual | 2 vCPU, 8 GB RAM | 4 GB RAM | NA | 50 GB |
Operating System - Windows Server 2016, 64-bit Mongo DB + Solr |
For e.g., some of the exercises, we will be covering installation in HA mode for which users can refer to the installation guide for details on hardware sizing.
BigFix Runbook AI also requires certain prerequisites to be available before the product installation. Refer to the Prerequisites Guide for installing the prerequisites.
Ensure that the hardware is provisioned as per the environment finalized and the prerequisites are installed before proceeding with the installation in next exercise.
Conclusion
Through this exercise, we have covered the step by step procedure to identify the automation potential from the ticket dump shared by an organization. It helps in assessing the applicability of BigFix Runbook AI for enhancing automation within their environment.
Now, let’s explore the installation procedure for BigFix Runbook AI.