What is WFA ?
WFA stands for "OnCommand Workflow Automation".It's basically a framework with a workflow engine that can run on Linux or Windows.
What can it do for me ?
It can automate your processes, like provisioning storage, automating vmware, integrate with Active Directory, ... anything that can be done with powershell or perl, really.Why WFA, I already have scripts to do this
Scripts are great. But only to a certain level. How do you provide input towards your scripts ? Is every operator so familiar with a shell/command line ? Sometimes scripts are asking for information that could easily be extracted from somewhere else, why bother the operator with these tasks.That's where WFA makes the difference. It's using your Powershell or Perl scripts you might already have.
You can convert (as good as copy-paste) any non-interactive perl or powershell script in a WFA command. These commands become building blocks. You stitch commands together to a workflow, but now with all the goodies WFA can offer.
- Friendly Userinput Forms
- Expression based naming conventions
- Automated Resource Selection (have WFA decide what resources to use)
- Safe credentials storing
- Invoke by REST, that's right, WFA has a REST API.
- ... and many more
Not only NetApp Storage
Although built by NetApp to automate NetApp Storage processes, you can automate anything that runs on PowerShell or perl.Obviously there is already a lot of built-in stuff (commands, datasources,...) for Netapp Storage, but you can use WFA for about anything. And that's the beauty of WFA really.
