You've heard the term "manual provisioning" more times than you can count the episodes in Friends. To you and your IT team, every other provisioning technique, especially in the context of network monitoring resources, plays the second fiddle.
If this were in 2005, we'd gladly say, "Go right ahead, Client A, it's the only fish in the sea of provisioning techniques, and as far as we are concerned, it's the cheapest and the most efficient!"
Well, we hate to break it to you, but we're no longer in '05, and before you look away in chagrin, we've got some good news for you!
The ever-growing, digital-first IT world (aka, the gift that keeps on giving) has an even better technique up its sleeves—automatic provisioning via REST APIs!
What is automated provisioning?
You're right; automated provisioning is just what it sounds like—having the ability to deploy network monitoring resources using predefined automated procedures without requiring human intervention. Only that this time, we're spicing it up a little to include REST APIs.
Yearning to find out more about auto-provisioning your monitoring tools over REST APIs? Read on!
Automatic Provisioning and REST APIs: A Match Made in Heaven
In case you've already forgotten, automatic provisioning is the ability to deploy a technology using protocols that are carried out electronically. No manual input is involved. Zero.
In the network monitoring context, it specifically means managing the lifecycle of a monitoring resource.
Think of it as merely a process of setting up a network monitoring resource for information systems to use. It's all about bringing together clients (device, system, or app needing the monitoring resource) and servers (the resource itself) in one place.
That said, there is no better way to provision your monitoring resources than over a REST API.
Why? Because REST APIs provide unmatched flexibility. Client-server interaction is not tied to methods or resources. So, REST can handle many types of calls, return distinct data formats, and, most importantly, provide more efficient and logical APIs for monitoring services.
Besides, auto-provisioning is important for the scalability of a network environment. When a project includes hundreds, thousands, or even millions of devices that need to be connected to an enterprise network, it is virtually impossible to configure each URL on each device manually.
With the right automation technology in place, a mission-critical organization becomes agile and scalable with minimal resources and time.
So it's fair to say that automatic provisioning and REST APIs are akin to Meredith and Christina (you know, from the timeless Grey's Anatomy?): one can't do without another.
How To Automate Provisioning Using REST APIs
Not so long ago, provisioning of monitoring resources used to be a manual affair. That includes setting up the physical servers and configuring them to the appropriate settings.
And if you needed more scalability, you would have to request more hardware, and then set it up and then provision it.
Today, monitoring is now (read: almost always) defined in software, and advancements in web-service technology have sped up the provisioning process while discarding the need for regular hardware management. All this could not have been possible without automation.
Automation has increased the capacity and scale of multiple enterprise network environments too, which comes with its share of challenges.
IT decision-makers need to provision network infrastructure for each new client (we mean device, system, app, or anything in between), and let's face it, manual provisioning is not exactly a rollercoaster. It's time-consuming and prone to human error.
With that in mind, the deployment of management scripts and device monitoring becomes an absolute nightmare.
Not anymore.
REST APIs offer a solution and make it possible to automate your entire network infrastructure. This new client-to-server convergence technology allows for the provisioning of monitoring resources through HTTP calls instead of through manual processes.
Automating provisioning with REST APIs means that your team doesn't need to "warm-up" clients, servers, or monitors every time they provide a new monitoring resource.
With REST API, you can run a simple script to fit your network specifications. This takes away most of the provisioning work from the IT team, who simply need to execute a simple HTTP code to have the monitoring resource ready to go.
REST API ensures that you deploy monitoring resources to the same network infrastructure every time.
Deploying your monitoring resource as a script also means that you can divide your resource into modular components that can then be combined in distinct ways through automation.
Scripting your monitoring resources gives you a playbook to follow for provisioning. And although this can still be achieved manually, an automated provisioning tool, such as WhatsUp Gold RESTful API, can do it for you.
Automated Provisioning Benefits (Bonus)
Other than improved accuracy and scalability, automated provisioning via REST APIs offers the following KEY perks:
Increased Visibility in Network Infrastructure
With REST API in place, you'll have a clear picture of which client has access to what monitoring resource. You won't leave resource access up to chance or entrust availability control to individuals across the company. So, no more shadow allocations, fuzzy clients, or non-existent servers—just a concise, transparent end-to-end monitoring process.
Attain Compliance Requirements
Automated provisioning is a key aspect of the broader compliance strategy, too. Often, you'll encounter stringent compliance schema dictating provisioning and deprovisioning stipulations, such as assigning each client a unique ID when accessing network monitoring resources.
IT admins who design an automated strategy ensure compliance with such requirements every time. You should definitely do the same, and there's only one place to start: REST API!
Automated Provisioning With WhatsUp Gold RESTful API
Creating an organizational-wide approach to automation lets you automate monitoring resources provisioning and entire infrastructures, teams, and technologies.
With the right automation software in place, you can deploy new monitoring resources faster and manage your network infrastructure more seamlessly.
Progress believes automation is a strategic and vital component of digital transformation. Our one-of-a-kind solution, WhatsUp Gold RESTful API, underlines this fact and can give you the control you need to automatically provision your network monitoring resources like a BOSS.
So whether you're a proactive CEO who's itching to get started with automated provisioning or a farsighted IT leader who wants to expand network monitoring across use cases, WhatsUp Gold Restful API is the perfect solution for you. We can't wait to hear from you, so feel free to fill this contact form or request a demo today.