Automation increases efficiency, consistency, and reliability of routine operations.
Automation types
- Scheduled: Time-based execution (cron jobs).
- Event-driven: Triggered by system events.
- Workflow: Multi-step processes (CI/CD pipelines).
- RPA: Robotic process automation for business tasks.
Common automation targets
- System maintenance: Backups, updates, cleanup.
- Deployments: Build, test, deploy code.
- Monitoring: Health checks, alerts.
- Data processing: ETL, report generation.
- Testing: Unit, integration, E2E tests.
Automation tools
- Shell scripts: Bash, PowerShell.
- Task schedulers: Cron, Windows Task Scheduler.
- Workflow engines: Apache Airflow, Jenkins.
- Configuration management: Ansible, Terraform.
- CI/CD: GitHub Actions, GitLab CI.
Best practices
- Automate frequently repeated tasks.
- Document what automation does.
- Include error handling and logging.
- Test automation in non-production first.
- Monitor automated task execution.
- Maintain idempotency (safe to run multiple times).
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