{"id":2404,"date":"2014-06-27T13:30:45","date_gmt":"2014-06-27T19:30:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jumpcloud.com\/?p=2404"},"modified":"2024-11-08T17:21:03","modified_gmt":"2024-11-08T22:21:03","slug":"automate-tasks-across-servers-based-events","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jumpcloud.com\/blog\/automate-tasks-across-servers-based-events","title":{"rendered":"Automate Tasks Across Servers Based on Events"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the most complicated aspects of automation is to automate tasks that happen because something else triggers them. It\u2019s relatively easy to manually execute a task \u2013 unless it is on a lot of servers<\/a><\/strong>, then it\u2019s not so easy \u2013 and, you can leverage tools to schedule tasks (again reasonably easy on a limited number of servers), but as soon as you think about going to the next level of automation and doing that off of different events, that gets really hard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The main reason this gets hard is that you need to send a \u201ctrigger\u201d when that event happens and usually this isn\u2019t on the same server. It is cross-infrastructure communication. Then, you need to have something that \u201creceives\u201d the trigger. That listener needs to understand what it is receiving and then figure out what to go do because of that event. Most organizations are not going to build these capabilities themselves \u2013 it\u2019s just too time consuming. So, what ends up happening is that you either make this a manual process or you\u2019ll script it as a scheduled task with delays in between (if this is even possible \u2013 some tasks just can\u2019t be done that way<\/a><\/strong>). Or, what happens in most cases is that you just don\u2019t try to connect the two tasks together. Sometimes distributed job scheduling solutions will try to trigger based on events, sometimes they don\u2019t. It depends on the solution and often how you implement your workflows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At JumpCloud, we have spent a significant amount of time developing the functionality to trigger server tasks and workflows off of events. These could be events internal to the server, they could be from other servers in your infrastructure or even third party applications. JumpCloud\u2019s server management tools can ingest basically a Webhook from anywhere and that can kick off an action. Those actions could include server tasks, data processing tasks, user management tasks, security tasks, load balancing, monitoring, and many, many more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Structurally, here\u2019s how it works:<\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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  1. Set up a command in JumpCloud by going to the commands tab (make sure that you select whether this is a Linux or Windows task at the top, the user with which to run the command, and the servers it should run on). Note that your command can be quite complicated. Remember that JumpCloud has the ability to \u201cchain\u201d tasks together as well as the ability to \u201csplit\u201d tasks (i.e. instruct multiple servers to execute the command.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. After inputting the task that you would like to automate, simply set the command\u2019s launch event, to \u201cRun on Trigger (webhook)\u201d, name the trigger.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Save your task.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    That\u2019s it \u2013 you\u2019re ready to go. When your event happens, it will automatically trigger the command you want. Simple. That\u2019s the beauty of what we\u2019ve built at JumpCloud<\/strong> \u2013 we are taking really complex system administration tasks and making them simple with the platform we\u2018ve built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Using Event Based Triggers to Automate Tasks Across Servers<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    Now that we have told you how to do this, let\u2019s talk about some simple uses of this capability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n