Join this session to learn about some tips, techniques and tools that CenterPoint Energy uses with CA Workload Automation AutoSys® Edition (AE) to reduce the number of job failures and reduce costs for batch processing. During this session, Tess Dowdy, Manager of Enterprise Systems Control at CenterPoint Energy will also review its processes and procedures to streamline your batch and to possibly eliminate the late night telephone calls to the clients. For more information, please visit http://cainc.to/Nv2VOe

1. Customer Case Study:
CenterPoint Energy - How to achieve .0003 abends!
Tess Dowdy
DevOps: Continuous Delivery
• Centerpoint Energy
• Technology Operations Manager
• DO4X180S

2. Customer Case Study:
CenterPoint Energy - How to achieve .0003 abends!
Tess Dowdy – Technology Operations Manager
CenterPoint Energy

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The content provided in this CA World 2015 presentation is intended for informational purposes only and does not form
any type of warranty. The information provided by a CA partner and/or CA customer has not been reviewed for accuracy
by CA.
For Informational Purposes Only
Terms of this Presentation

4. Abstract
Join this session to learn about some tips,
techniques, and tools that Centerpoint Energy
uses with CA Workload Automation AE
(AutoSys) to reduce the number of job failures
and reduce costs for batch processing. During
this session, Tess Dowdy/Centerpoint Energy
will also review their processes and procedures
to streamline your batch and to possibly
eliminate the late night telephone calls to the
clients.
Tess Dowdy
Centerpoint Energy
Technology Operations
Manager

5. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Agenda
5
 Who is CenterPoint Energy?
 Workload Automation in our environment/Job Statistics
 Reduce costs for batch processing
 Tips, Techniques, and Tools
 Processes and Procedures
 Q&A

6. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
CenterPoint Energy (CNP)
6
Electric Transmission
& Distribution
Natural Gas Distribution
Competitive Natural Gas
Sales & Services
 Headquartered in Houston, Texas
 Serving 5.5 million electric & gas metered customers
 $21.8 billion in assets
 $8.1 billion in revenue
 More than 8,700 employees
 Over 135 years of service to our communities
 Electric transmission and distribution delivery business
 Over 2.2 million metered customers in Houston area
 17.3 GW peak demand
 79 GW hours delivered annually
 233 substations
 3,739 miles of transmission
 49,162 miles of distribution

7. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Workload Automation in our Environment
7
 Application Servers (Prod & Test)
 (1) CPU each
 Autosys11.3.5 INCR3
 AIX version 7.1
 Oracle Database v11.2.0.3.7
 12GB Memory (DB&APP)
 3.5GB (Current Database size)
 Utilization
 70% AVG CPU
 80% AVG Memory

8. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Workload Automation in our Environment
8
 Platforms
 UNIX/LINUX
 Windows
 Mainframe
 Agents Installed
 397 servers
 6 mainframe
 Jobs Defined
 14,530 (Prod Servers)
 5,507 (Prod Mainframe)
 Jobs/Failures per month
 2,316,759 jobs executed
 776 Failures (.0003)

9. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Reduce Costs for Batch Processing
9
 Reduce the time required to process the work
 Service Level Agreements
 Eliminate costly reruns
 Dependencies or Negative Dependencies
 Stabilize the batch processing environment
 Eliminate orphaned PIDs, maintenance windows, etc.
 Pinpoint bottlenecks
 Utilize a critical monitoring software
 Automate schedules and manage batch processing cycles
 Job sets vs single jobs
Automate…. Automate…. Automate….

10. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Tips, Techniques, and Tools
10
 Tips
 Utilize a test environment
 Work with clients to test executable scripts
 Provide recommendations/suggestions
 Techniques
 Agent verifications using “Touch” jobs
 Utilize Machine Offline/Online jobs
 Define requirements (max/min run times)
 Utilize dependencies/negative dependencies
 Tools
 Critical Path Monitoring software
 Job Scheduling form
 Job Documentation database
 Event management software
 Change, incident, service request software

11. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Tools – Job Scheduling Form
Blue fields must be completed or the form will be returned
Job Scheduling Form
General Information: AE11.3 v1
Application ID (example CCS, ESD, TMH)
Criticality Critical - see instructions on line 5
Special Instructions/Restart/Recovery:
Is this request a(n):
Start Date:
Requestor info
Requestor Name:
Contact Number:
Alarm Point - ServiceNow Group Name:
WBS:
CM or SR Number:
Has the job been added to the ESP Interface: NOTE: If this step is not
completed it will cause a delay in adding the job to AUTOSYS
Use this link to add the job to ESP
https://esp:8443/login.jsp
Primary Information
Job Name:
Job type:
Description:
Owner:
Dependency type: Dependency job name(s):
Jobset:
Command:
Prod send to Machine: If New box describe:
Test send to Machine: If New box describe:
Schedule
Run Calendar or
Run Frequency If Other describe:
Time(s) of day or
Minutes after each hour
Exclude Calendar
Run Window
Alarms
Must start
Must complete
Minimum run time ? minutes
Maximum run time ? minutes
Send Alarm On Failure: 1
Terminate after running ? minutes: If Yes how many minutes:
Permissions
Automatically restart Job ? times after failure:
Maximum exit code for success:
Command Info
Standard input:
Standard output: If Other describe:
Standard error: If Other describe:
Job environment/profile
11

12. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Tools – Event Management
12

13. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Tools – Event Management
13

14. CenterPoint Energy Proprietary and Confidential
Processes and Procedures
14
Processes:
 Change Record
 Test Environment
 Job Scheduling Form
 Job Set or Single job
 Event Management
 Move to Production
Procedures:
 Move to Production
 Critical/Non Critical
 On-call notification
 Service Request for action
 Research job failures
 Contact client for further discussions

15. Thank You on Behalf of CenterPoint Energy
tessdowdy@CenterPointEnergy.com

16. Q & A

17. For More Information
To learn more, please visit:
http://cainc.to/Nv2VOe
CA World ’15