What’s in Your .bat File?

Still using .bat files for your batch automation on Windows? They’re a tried-and-true method for automating your batch jobs and in the busy world of IT, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But as automation evolves, and best practices change, you may want to ask yourself these questions to better understand what’s in your .bat file and assess if there could be a better way to automate.

Is your .bat file slowing you down?

We know that .bat files can be hard to give up. They’re powerful workhorses that act as a container of DOS commands. They can contain many lines of code that have been reliably working to process your batch jobs over the years.

However, these lines of code can start to add up and slow you down. For example, we’ve seen instances where an eighty line.bat script could be boiled down to just about three lines in PowerShell. With bloated code, using legacy .bat files can take much more time to manage and run. Modernizing these could help reduce your runtime by over 65 percent.

Is your .bat file secure?

To automate certain processes, other users may have included usernames and passwords in the .bat file. When these sensitive credentials are included as plaintext in the file, it poses major security risks. If a hacker were to access it, they could easily run your jobs on their terms. Or make things even worse by using stolen credentials to access your other critical systems.

In today’s IT landscape, security needs to be top of mind. And that especially includes keeping automated workloads secure. Automation should make your life easier. Don’t let a vulnerable .bat file that includes plaintext credentials make things harder on your team.

Is it hard to troubleshoot your .bat file?

When problems arise from a failed process, time is of the essence to get things back up and running. Downtime can cost your company more than just productivity, and log files can help you get to the bottom of failures. The logs that get generated from the output of an executable within your .bat file will oftentimes get redirected from STDOUT to flat text log files, leaving you with disparate text files sitting in folders all over different machines.

Tracking down log files eats up the time you could be spending on fixing failed processes, especially if you don’t know exactly how the .bat file was configured and built. And as a .bat file ages, or if there’s turnover in your IT department, it can become difficult to keep track of where they’re running, what they’re doing, and where to find the log files without a centralized way to keep track of things.

Secure and Centralize Your .bat Files with Workload Automation

While you don’t have to stop using your .bat files, finding a solution to secure and centralize them can save your IT team from a lot of headaches down the road. Whether it’s your .bat files, SSIS packages, or PERL scripts, by centralizing your jobs with a workload automation solution, you can manage them with ease and ensure consistent security measures.

Using JAMS for batch processing and job scheduling is just one step in simplifying the complexity of your workloads. That’s why we make it easy to keep your .bat files when you convert to JAMS. And when you’re ready to take your IT modernization efforts up a notch, we’re with you every step of the way.