What's a better way to automate the middleware process, using DevOps, where all processes are integrated from this Deploy to restart environment automatically?

I'm interested to hear what others have to say regarding using the DevOps tools for automating standard operational activities. The DevOps automation works effectively for two primary reasons:  

• The automation is designed for repetitive tasks with the assumption that all components are operational.
• There doesn't have to be a lot of error handling and recovery built into the automation.

My experience in doing unattended Production automation is that the resulting automation can be from 10-100 times more complicated than the manual process once the necessary error handling and detection has been put into place.  Furthermore, metadata (lists of servers, etc.) needs to be maintained over time to keep everything running correctly. 

My initial thought is that simple tasks, like the startup you mentioned, could be done using standard DevOps packages (e.g. Jenkins), but they could also just as easily be done by standard scripting.  More complicated tasks, such as startups after errors, would probably tax the DevOps frameworks.    

Regards,

Glen Brumbaugh

IBM Champion (Cloud)

Can you be a little more specific?  What does "automate the middleware process" mean?  Are you talking about starting middleware (starting WAS or Apache Tomcat servers), or deploying JAR/WAR/EAR files to web servers, or applying configuration to web servers, or keeping these servers operational?  Of course, there are many more examples of middleware than just web servers. 

Tools such as IBM UrbanCode Deploy are excellent at Application Release Automation (ARA) and in many cases can deploy middleware configuration (or even the middleware software itself!).  However, it is not really designed to monitor the on-going operation of middleware.  IBM has other tools that can do this with excellence.

 https://www.ibm.com/us-en/marketplace/application-release-automation