Script management refers to the processes, practices, and tools used by IT teams to develop, test, deploy, execute, and maintain scripts that automate tasks or execute commands across infrastructure, applications, databases, and more.
With the right script management practices in place, IT teams can realize significant efficiency gains, risk reductions, and improved agility. However, without thoughtful script management, organizations run the risk of increasing tech debt, outages, and security issues over time.
This comprehensive guide explores the world of IT script management, including the benefits, use cases, tools, best practices, and future trends that IT leaders need to understand.
Why Script Management Matters
IT infrastructure has grown increasingly complex over the past decade. What used to be physical servers in an on-prem data center has shifted to a mix of virtual machines, containers, serverless functions, and cloud resources. This hybrid landscape introduces management challenges.
Scripts serve as the automation glue that allows IT teams to coordinate and control such diverse technology stacks. Whether checking server resources, updating configurations, deploying applications, or recovering from failures, scripts execute routine tasks at scale.
However, these very same scripts can cause problems if not properly controlled:
- Outdated scripts may stop functioning after upgrades or policy changes
- Poorly tested scripts could corrupt data or cause outages
- Unapproved/unauthorized scripts increase security risks
- Losing track of the number of scripts makes issue investigation difficult
- Lack of documentation means troubleshooting scripts relies on tribal knowledge
That’s why implementing script management brings discipline to development efforts and minimizes these risks over time. Let’s explore the key reasons why.
1. Improved Efficiency
IT staff spend an inordinate amount of time on manual, repetitive tasks ideal for scripting such as server patching, application deployments, user provisioning, and more.
By leveraging script management tools and practices, IT teams automate these mundane functions to reduce costs and free up staff for higher-value efforts like innovation and optimization. Efficiency gains of 30-50% are common when first implementing script management capabilities.
2. Reduced Errors
Without script management, IT staff copy/paste scripts from internal wikis or even external sites like StackOverflow. This increases the risk of typos, omitted variables, incorrect logic, and more. Plus staff may grab old, outdated versions by mistake.
Script management enforces version control, peer reviews, testing policies, rollback procedures, and access controls during the scripting process to minimize errors. Tools can also auto-generate script documentation and validate syntax. This prevents faulty scripts from ever reaching production systems.
3. Centralized Control
When IT staff create scripts stored locally on laptops or file shares, it becomes impossible to track all automation efforts occurring across the infrastructure, let alone coordinate them effectively.
Script management solutions centralize storage, permissions, testing, approvals, and more within a common platform. This enables IT leadership to view, control, and optimize the automation portfolio holistically using dashboards and analytics.
4. Scheduling Workflows
While scripts serve their primary purpose of automating tasks upon execution, their true power emerges when integrating them into scheduled workflows.
Modern script management platforms make it easy to chain scripts together, pass parameters between them, incorporate conditional logic for decision branching, and handle error handling gracefully. This orchestration can occur on fixed schedules or in response to event triggers.
5. Audit Trails
Strict compliance and governance requirements demand IT document who accesses what systems and when. Relying on manual logs from admins after running scripts proves time-consuming, inconsistent, and risky from an audit perspective.
Script management tools automatically record details like script name, parameters, start time, end time, and status as they execute. This produces complete audit trails that demonstrate compliance without any extra work from IT staff.
Use Cases for Script Management
Now that we’ve covered the primary benefits, let‘s explore some common use cases where script management delivers value.
Automating Repetitive Tasks
Any tasks that IT staff regularly perform manually represent prime targets for scripting automation. Common examples include:
- Server/desktop patching
- User account provisioning/deprovisioning
- Software deployments
- Log analysis
- Report generation
- Database backups
- File transfers
Automating these repetitive, tactical tasks improves productivity and frees up staff for more impactful efforts.
Integrating Systems/Applications
Many IT environments rely on various cloud services, on-prem applications, and legacy systems simultaneously. Getting these disparate solutions to interoperate poses challenges.
Script management helps bridge connectivity gaps by allowing automated data exchanges between sources. For example, scripts can extract data from an on-prem CRM then insert it into a cloud data warehouse. Or pull identity audit logs from a SaaS application to feed an on-prem SIEM.
Monitoring/Notifications
While traditional monitoring platforms notify IT teams about outages or anomalies, scripts allow for automated remediation responses. For instance, a script could restart unresponsive services, reprovision cloud resources that hit capacity, or scale out application tiers based on usage loads.
Scripts also enable proactive monitoring by checking for issues before they cause problems. Examples include validating backups completed successfully, scanning configuration files for insecure settings, or confirming successful server patching across estates.
Detecting/Fixing Errors
IT staff waste countless hours each week investigating issues signaled by alerts, tickets, or user complaints. Scripts can accelerate diagnoses by pulling relevant logs or system information on demand.
Scripts also enable self-healing capabilities by programmatically remediating problems where feasible. For instance, clearing cache, recycling app pools, redeploying corrupted files, or recovering failed database transactions. This reduces downtime and cuts ticket volumes.
Reporting/Analytics
While BI tools analyze historical trends, they lack real-time operational insights into the current state of IT infrastructure. Scripts fill this gap by polling live system metadata which leadership can view on dashboards.
Examples include visibility into license utilization, storage capacity, identity access, application adoption, network performance and more. Such analytics inform better decisions.
Types of Scripts
IT environments leverage various types of scripts to automate tasks, integrate tools, administer infrastructure, deploy applications, and more. Common languages include:
Linux/MacOS Shell – Shell scripts automate administration of Unix-style operating systems using bash syntax. They execute sequential commands and make use of variables, conditionals, loops and other structured programming concepts.
PowerShell – Microsoft’s task automation framework allows admins to control functions within Windows operating systems and applications via .PS1 scripts. PowerShell builds on top of the .NET runtime.
Python – General purpose programming language often used for scripting tasks that involve accessing APIs, parsing data files, connecting disparate systems, automating workflows and building GUIs.
JavaScript – Increasingly popular for scripting as Node.js runtime allows execution of JS code outside of web browsers. This facilitates automation of front-end processes.
VBScript – Lightweight Microsoft scripting language enabling Windows admins to tap into Component Object Model (COM) interfaces exposed by underlying OS services and apps.
Beyond these languages, niche options like Perl, Ruby, PHP, and more fit specific use cases as well. The right language depends on the target environment and object skills.
Script Management Challenges
Implementing consistent script management brings discipline to development and reduced risks as previously outlined. However, several common challenges can derail efforts if not addressed appropriately:
Version Control
Teams often lose track of which scripts represent the current, approved versions vs outdated copies. Storing scripts in decentralized locations exacerbates this issue. Failed automation and unexpected behaviors result.
Script management best practice involves maintaining a centralized code repository with rigorous access controls, peer reviews, testing, and release procedures tracked.
Security
Scripts execute with elevated privileges so flaws open doors for malicious actors. Without reviews or testing, any user can introduce vulnerabilities intentionally or not. Stolen credentials within scripts also introduce risk.
Secure script management requires identity management, 2FA access controls, secrets management, automated scanning, and peer reviews to minimize attack surfaces.
Complexity
As infrastructure complexity and interdependencies grow exponentially, script logic often spirals out of control. Monolithic scripts get harder to maintain needing constant updates with each environment change.
Modular design and reusable libraries keep scripts simple, elegant and maintainable as environments scale up. Abstracting platform-specific logic behind functions and APIs prevents cascade failures.
Access/Permissions
Over time, scripts accumulate bloat as contributors come and go. This requires managing a matrix of access controls to ensure authors only impact relevant scripts. Lax reviews lead to unauthorized changes and overprivileged users.
Script management solutions centralize permissions, segregate duties, implement peer reviews and integrate with existing IAM systems to govern access strictly. File share scripting lacks robust controls.
Best Practices for Script Management
Migrating from ad hoc, decentralized scripting by individual admins to an enterprise-wide script management practice represents a cultural shift. Define policies and encourage these best practices:
Naming Conventions – Standardize script names across teams for consistency. Useful patterns include solution.category.function. For example: server-patching.powershell.check-status
Commenting – Mandate comments within scripts noting authors, descriptions, change history, known issues and other details to facilitate troubleshooting.
Modularization – Break large scripts into functions that handle discrete tasks. This improves reusability, testing and maintenance of business logic across scripts.
Testing – Require all scripts go through unit testing and staged integration testing mimicking production topologies before approval for use.
Documentation – Generate standardized README files for all scripts detailing purposes, parameters, prerequisites, usage examples and FAQs based on template.
Code Reviews – Enforce peer reviews of all new and edited scripts to improve quality and security by leveraging combined team expertise before releases.
Sandbox Environments – Provide replicated environments for teams to safely develop and experiment with scripts without risking real data or availability.
Leading Script Management Tools
Many tools exist to assist IT teams with implementing script management capabilities:
Microsoft System Center – SCCM, SCOM, SCAP, and DSC natively enable Windows script management across servers, networking and storage. Integrates with PowerShell.
VMware vRealize – vRealize Automation and vRealize Orchestrator help manage scripts interacting with VMware hypervisors, NSX networking, and vSAN storage.
Ansible – Agentless configuration management platform uses YAML scripts to automate apps, middleware, infrastructure and cloud. Includes built-in modules.
Puppet – Datacenter automation tool installs software, configures settings and enforces desired state policies across multi-OS environments via Ruby scripts.
Chef – Infrastructure automation framework uses recipes written in Ruby DSL to standardize and scale cross-platform IT operations.
SaltStack – Infrastructure, app and cloud orchestration system leverages Python scripting to enable event-driven automation.
Jenkins – Open source CI/CD server allowing users to implement pipelines-as-code deploying infrastructure and apps using Groovy DSL scripts.
There are also various language-specific script repositories like PSGallery for PowerShell and Ansible Galaxy for Ansible. These enable discovery and reuse of existing scripts.
Tips for Getting Started
For organizations new to script management, avoid boiling the ocean. Start simple then build upon small wins over time:
Start Small – Identify one or two routine, repetitive admin tasks already relying on scripts done manually today. Begin version controlling and scheduling those as pilots.
Develop Guidelines – Outline conventions for factors like naming, testing expectations, peer reviews, change controls and documentation.
Test Extensively – Setup sandbox testing environments that mirror production and mandate both unit and integration testing to flush out issues pre-deployment.
Plan Permission Model – Take an inventory of all existing scripts and owners then design standardized access policies based on roles and responsibilities.
Monitor Closely – Instrument monitoring within scheduled scripts to track status, capture errors, and notify if stalled or failed. Tune over time.
The Future of Script Management
Looking ahead, as infrastructure complexity continues rising while skilled IT talent grows scarce, script management will only increase in importance:
Configuration Management – Tools like Ansible, Puppet and Chef will displace ad hoc scripting by standardizing how organizations define and deploy infrastructure/apps as code.
Infrastructure as Code – Declarative policy scripts will replace procedural domain scripts to simplify management of hybrid cloud resources using GitOps pipelines.
CI/CD Integration – Script repositories will move from standalone silos to native connectivity with CI/CD platforms like Jenkins as a standard phase in application pipelines.
These shifts will accelerate as AI/ML further enhances automation capabilities in the coming years. The ability to manage scripts effectively represents table stakes for modern IT organizations.
Key Takeaways
Here are the critical insights covered in this comprehensive guide to script management:
- Scripts automate repetitive tasks but require oversight to minimize risks
- Implementing script management brings efficiency, governance and agility
- Common use cases involve automation, integration, monitoring and remediation
- PowerShell, Bash, Python and JavaScript represent prevalent languages
- Standardize naming, testing, reviews, documentation and permissions for scripts
- Leading tools include System Center, vRealize, Ansible, Puppet and Jenkins
- Start small then progressively expand centralized script management practices
While scripting delivers tangible productivity and consistency benefits, uncontrolled efforts can introduce as many problems as they solve over time if not managed appropriately.
Following the recommendations outlined in this guide will help IT leaders maximize value while proactively reducing risks. Reach out for tailored advice on implementing script management solutions successfully.