BMC TrueSight Server Automation Reviews

• OS provisioning
• Patch management
• IT audit and compliance
• Application deployments
• Data gathering and reporting

Awesome compliance, inventory, provisioning, patch, and deployment.

• Agentless software
• More use cases into compliance management and the remediation process.
  

In some versions, we do have stability, especially 8.5.

Not really.

Technical support is good.

We used shell scripting and other legacy tools.

The initial setup is straightforward, unless you need most of the custom configurations.

Licensing is a bit pricey. Be mindful about the components that you need and buy as appropriate.

We evaluated one stop shop solutions and vendors.

If you do not want the hassle of multiple tools and handling multiple vendors, this is your go to solution.

We are evaluating this product in search of a better automation solution for our system. We are using a private-cloud deployment on AWS.

The most important feature is the schedulings. We want to have them set up to handle as much automation as possible to reduce the resources involved with the project.

The documentation for this solution is good.

We would like to see this solution handle more multitasking. We would like to schedule it for a number of servers, for example, one-hundred servers, and duplicate that task.

This solution would benefit from having additional features.

The stability of this solution seems to be good. So far, the automation we do in the background has run on schedule, and the functionality is really good.

We have tested it on a small scale of fifty to one hundred servers. We have almost twenty-five hundred servers, so we will deploy on a larger scale perhaps six months down the road.

Technical support for this solution is very responsive. The team has opened multiple cases and all of them have been resolved for the first two weeks.

The initial setup for this solution is straightforward.

We are just starting to deploy the product. Right now we're sampling about fifty systems to do automation, such as updating and rebooting systems.

AccuData is our vendor for this solution, as well as for other products. They have been a good vendor.

If it does what we expect, and those features are improved, then I think we will see ROI within the next two years.

We're looking at less than $100,000 USD for this solution.

At the end of the day, we have a budget for these automation tools. If this one fits our budget then we'll go for it. If not, then we might have to find a solution that is more without our range.

This evaluation is a team effort. There are three of us involved in the project, and we're looking forward to seeing how it goes. We have a wishlist with our priorities, and we'll see if it satisfies what we want.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

My primary use case was patching.

Earlier, we had Windows Server Update Services in place. With that, we were only using internal patches. But with BMC, we even configured applications, like IE or things that were Java-related. When we scheduled the jobs, it worked fine. It saved us time and there was no need for resources to monitor them. The jobs worked at the times we scheduled. And, if a job failed we monitored for that.

Also, BMC did not have impact in terms of network-related issues. For example, previously, if we staged patches in the daytime, they would use more network bandwidth. 

In addition, that one BladeLogic was used for almost in 1,000 servers. If we had to do that manually it would be a very big headache.

In terms of improving collaboration between IT operations and security teams, there was a security team and they were using Nexpose scanning to analyze the servers. But it was not up to date. We were informed that the patches were not installed and we worked on pushing the packages to the servers which had not been updated.

Overall, it saved me time.

We didn't use most of the advanced features. We just used it to implement patching where we needed to run scheduling and do automation jobs.

Jobs were supposed to run automatically and, if there was a failure, it was supposed to fix it. But that was not happening. When we added 20 servers to one job, and one server failed, the job was showing as completely failed. The next job was supposed to integrate with some applications. For example, there was a BIG-IP load-balancer. If we wanted to run it as a BMC job, first it was supposed to take out from the load-balancer and then the job was supposed to run. If there were particular services there, like SQL services, they were supposed to be stopped and then the job was supposed to re-start triggering. But that was not happening.

The dashboard has many features but we couldn't use it because, somewhere, the communication was lost. When we tried to open it, it would not open. We mostly operated the solution manually. We did not have a lot of resources for this particular project so we were unable to put in a call to BMC to try to get this fixed.

When trying to get accounts for BMC BladeLogic we were asked to raise a ticket. But we should first be asked if we've had some minimal training on the BMC BladeLogic. Only then should they go ahead and provide accounts. Without any knowledge of the product, we used the KB articles to start working. As a result, we definitely did not have full knowledge of BMC BladeLogic. We ended up asking simple and silly questions, which is not good. They need to provide a minimum of knowledge with training on YouTube or somewhere else. Currently, there is no video training available on YouTube. And outside of their organization, there are also there no training centers.

Another area for improvement is group scheduling if I'm trying to do all the servers. For example, if I want to do all the 2012 Servers - since the patches are the same for all of them - I can't do so. Maybe that feature exists but I'm unaware of it. That kind of filtering would be helpful.

I would also like to see scripting integrated with BMC and integration with PowerShell as well. But if we are trying to invoke a simple command to stop services, it would be good to have that. Currently, we need to depend on PowerShell only. If we're trying to do some of the servers, the first thing we need is for the services to be stopped, before going to the patching. We need to write a script for that and add it to the BMC tool and then we can start triggering the jobs. Otherwise, we will be in trouble when a service is running and the server is being patched. Something like radio buttons to stop the services would be good.

There is no option to see all the servers we patch and we cannot find what the server status is. Of course, we can what has been completed and what is pending and which servers have failed, but we cannot find server status from the BMC tool. For example, is the RDP up or not. We are using separate scripts for that.

We are doing that 150 or 200 servers at a time. If some of the servers fail, we don't know exactly. It shows, out of 200 servers, that ten or 15 servers have a "failed" status. So we need to log in to the servers, if we don't know scripting. That's why we are using the scripting, to know what the RDP status. We check manually or we use the scripting to find the status on them.

In addition, we are always getting complaints from the security team. They say, "You guys did patching on these servers, but there are still some packages are missing." If BMC is not integrated with the security tools, we will definitely continue getting complaints like that. BladeLogic needs to be integrated with security tools, like Nexpose and Cisco. Then we can see which servers are patched successfully and there will be no complaints from security.

I worked with it for almost two-and-a-half years.

BMC was very helpful in those areas where we submitted tickets. Overall their technical support was very good. It helped a lot.

The setup is not too complex compared to SCCM. 

I came to the project without any knowledge of BMC BladeLogic. We started going through the documents from the BMC BladeLogic KB articles and then we started working on the BMC tools. That was it. We didn't have any training on BMC BladeLogic.

We use the product for patching, compliance management, and server automation.

The product's valuable feature is its ability to conduct patching for multiple servers simultaneously.

BMC TrueSight Server Automation's scripting needs improvement.

We have been using BMC TrueSight Server Automation for four years.

The product is stable. I rate its stability an eight out of ten.

I rate the product's scalability a nine out of ten.

The technical support services are good.

Positive

The initial setup process is easy. The deployment time depends on specific project requirements.

The product is expensive. However, they provide all the essential services, including quick support solutions.

BMC TrueSight Server Automation works well with different operating systems and compliance management. Its wide-ranging capabilities for Linux, Windows, and application patching, along with group policy management and reporting,

I rate BMC TrueSight Server Automation an eight out of ten.

We have used this tool for deployment, patching, audit, compliance, and provisioning. Patching and code deployment are the most used functions that we use. 

NSH script is another widely used option.

It makes deployment easier and allows us to put restrictions on the server using role-based authorization. Also, BladeLogic lets users view the filesystem with minimal authorization to the server.

• Deployment
• NSH script

Provisioning needs to be more user-friendly. We were using BladeLogic for provisioning, but due to a lot of issues and complications, we had to stop using provisioning with this tool.

BMC Bladelogic Automation can be used across many OS platforms, providing us flexibility for deployments.

We were able to automate patching, provisioning, and compliance for our servers and network devices.

The setup of this suite is very complicated. It needs to be simplified.

We have used it for two years now.

Deploying it was very complicated.

We have had no issues with stability.

We have had no issues with scalability.

In my experience with their customer service, they are excellent.

From my experience in working with their technical support, they are good.

The initial setup was very complex; Not straightforward at all.

We implemented it with our in-house team.

• Automate maintenance of servers
• Patching
• Compliance and remediation
• Auditing
• Installing/updating software

When WannaCry appered, it was very simple and easy to create an audit job that scanned our servers for the vulnerability. We were then able to determine how many servers were affected and perform patching accordingly.

The ability to script and create BL packages to perform various functions. This makes automating our environment relatively easy to do.

A better CLI Database cleanup tool would help us with our regular maintenance of BladeLogic Server Automation.

BMC support is great. They usually can answer any of our questions in a short amount of time and solve our most complex issues.

Before, we used SCCM. I believe we made the switch because patching, compliance, and auditing were much better than with SCCM.

Not applicable.

I don't know.

Make sure you have a DBA.