RMM automation recipes: workflows that save hours every week

Automation is where RMM earns its keep. Not the “we send a ticket” kind — the “the problem is fixed before anyone sees it” kind. Here are the highest-leverage automation recipes we see running in the wild.

1. Disk space reclamation

Trigger: disk usage > 85% on any volume Actions:

Clear known temporary directories
Vacuum old log files older than N days
Clear package manager caches
If still > 80%, open a ticket with a size report

Saves a lot of 3 a.m. pages.

2. Service auto-restart with circuit breaker

Trigger: named service stopped Actions:

Restart the service
If it stops again within 5 minutes, do NOT restart — open a ticket instead

Without the circuit breaker, you get flap loops that hide the real problem.

3. Patch validation before rollout

Trigger: scheduled patch window Actions:

Snapshot a canary group
Apply patches
Run health checks for 15 minutes
Only then roll to the full fleet
If health checks fail, roll back the canary and page

This saves you from patch-day outages more times than it costs.

4. Onboarding workflow

Trigger: new hire ticket with username Actions:

Provision device from gold image
Enroll in RMM, log analysis, and device posture
Assign to team scope based on ticket tag
Send welcome email with access instructions

Turns “getting Alice a laptop” into a self-driving process.

5. Endpoint certificate renewal

Trigger: certificate expires in < 14 days Actions:

Generate new CSR
Submit to internal CA
Install the new cert
Restart dependent services
Verify and close the loop

Endpoint cert expiry is the #2 cause of surprise outages. Automation eliminates it.

6. Configuration drift detection

Trigger: nightly scheduled job Actions:

Run config hash against a gold state
For any drift, either remediate automatically (low-risk) or open a ticket (high-risk)
Report aggregate drift metrics per scope

This catches the “someone SSH’d in and edited nginx.conf three months ago” problem.

7. Ticketing auto-triage

Trigger: new alert from any monitor Actions:

Look up the tag/scope to find the right team
Open a ticket in the right queue
Attach the last 5 minutes of metrics as context
Link to the endpoint shell with a one-click launcher

Saves the on-call the “figure out who owns this” dance.

How to start

Don’t try to build all seven at once. Pick the one that’s costing you the most pager noise, run it for two weeks, and iterate on the edge cases. Most teams see 30% alert reduction from recipe #2 alone.