Information systems are composed of a wide variety of diverse resources that must be
managed effectively to achieve the goals of an open system environment. While the
individual resources (such as printers, software, users, processors) may differ widely,
the abstraction of these resources as managed objects allows for treatment in a uniform
manner. The basic concepts of management, including operation, administration, and
maintenance may then be applied to the full suite of information system components along
with their attendant services.
System and network management functionality may be divided in several different ways;
one way is to make a division according to the management elements that generically apply
to all functional resources. This division reduces to:
- User management services provide the ability to maintain a user's preferences and
privileges.
- Configuration management (CM) services address four basic functions:
- identification and specification of all component resources
- control, or the ability to freeze configuration items, changing them only through agreed
processes
- status accounting of each configuration item
- verification through a series of reviews to ensure conformity between the actual
configuration item and the information recorded about it
- These CM services include: Processor CM, Network CM, Distributed System CM, Topology CM
and Application CM. Processor CM takes a platform-centric approach. Network CM and
Distributed System CM services allow remote systems to be managed and monitored including
the interchange of network status. Topology CM is used to control the topology of
physical or logical entities that are distributed. Application CM focuses on applications.
Configuration management also appears as change management services in the paragraph on Object Services.
- Performance management services monitor performance aspects of hardware, platform
and application software, and network components and provide ways to tune the system to
meet performance targets.
- Availability and fault management services allow a system to react to the loss or
incorrect operation of system components including hardware, platform software, and
application software.
- Accounting management services provide the ability to cost services for charging
and reimbursement.
- Security management services control the security services in accordance with
applicable security policies.
- Print management services provide the ability to manage both local and remote
print spooling services.
- Network management services comprise elements of all the services described
above, but are often treated as a separate service.
- Backup and Restore services provide a multi-level storage facility to ensure
continued data security in case of component or sub-system failure.
- On-line Disk Management services manage the utilization of disk storage against
threshold values and invoke corrective action.
- License Management services support the effective enforcement of software license
agreements. Licensing services for objects are described under the licensing services
heading in the paragraph on Object Services.
- Capacity Management services address three basic functions:
- capacity management analyzing current and historic performance and capacity
- workload management to identify and understand applications that use the system
- capacity planning to plan required hardware resources for the future
- Software Installation services support distribution, installation, removal,
relocation, activation and automatic update of software or data packages from
transportable media or over networks. Similar services for objects are described under
installation and activation services in the paragraph dealing with Object
Services.
The following functional areas are currently supported mainly by application software,
but are progressing towards migration into the Application Platform:
- Trouble Ticketing services support the generation, processing and tracking of
problem reports. Trouble ticketing is a term originating in the telecommunications world,
referring to the ability to pass fault reports both within and between telecommunications
service providers. In this environment, faults are often found by a customer of one
provider, while the cause of the problem lies within the administrative domain of another
provider. Trouble ticketing is a common service that may be useful to an increasing range
of applications if the necessary work is done to extend it from telecommunications into
wider areas of distributed applications such as electronic mail.
This breakout of system and network management services parallels the breakout of
emerging OSI network management, thereby presenting an overall coherent framework that
applies equally to whole networks and the individual nodes of the networks.
One important consideration of the standards supporting the services in this category
is that they should not enforce specific management policies but rather enable a wide
variety of different management policies to be implemented, selected according to the
particular needs of the end-user installations.
System and network management services require the co-operation of other software
entities in:
- providing status information
- notifying events
- responding to management instructions
Copyright © The Open Group, 1998, 2000