Distributed System Administration From “The Continuing Evolution of Distributed Systems Management” by Westerinen and Bumpus (DMTF) Week-7

History – In the Beginning…  Centralised systems  Isolated  Data exchanged by media backup eg decks of punched cards or reels of Magnetic Tape  System management was centralised and performed during off-peak times

1970’s – Minicomputer based distributed systems  Isolated systems  Used by individual departments  Single function systems –Inventory, word processing Point-of-Sale, etc…  Supported by manufacturer specialists  Vendor unique (incompatible) technology

1980’s: PCs and local DataBases  Novelties: owned by individuals/departments  Initially self-contained and isolated  Later, information extracted from central databases was integrated into speadsheets and local PC applications  Required ad-hoc synchronisation to support mission-critical business applications

PCs and System Management  Now data centres had to manage mainframe and departmental data centres as well as large numbers of geographically dispersed desktop PCs  Distributed system management was: –Software upgrades –Configuration management –Software/Hardware Inventory

LANs: 3-tier Distributed Systems  New Technology – New challenges –Shared software and hardware –Data on shared fileservers –Configuration management was easier  3-Tier Data:Procedure architecture –Mainframe  FileServer  PC  Client-Server applications appear

LANs: 3-tier Distributed Systems  Entirely new area of Management  Synchronised application upgrades  Tools to monitor/locate performance and other network problems  Networks became more complex –Bridges/switches/routers: Enterprise WANs

Managing 3-tier Enterprise system  Enterprise network management  Became increasingly more difficult  Required large engineering staff to service and operate equipment

Network management with SNMP  Appearance of standards (ASN.1, SNMP, SMI)  Adopted by Network system vendors  Software agents in hardware for remote access to component instrumentation  Easy way for management applications to monitor and analyse network

1990s: Desktop SysAdmin: DMI  PC vendors needed instrumentation  Could not be achieved using SNMP  Desktop Management Interface (DMTF) a single service providing access to instrumentation in multiple components  Also allowed dynamic addition, removal and query of component descriptions (unlike SNMP where this was pre- compiled)

Distributed systems using HTML  another step in evolution of distributed systems  Web used for –Internet- product and sales support –Intranet- corporate information  Computing model changed from Client/Server to Browser/Application

Distributed systems using HTML  New possibilities for integration and platform independence  Central management of web servers  Distributed Services model –Many different applications –Hosted on many servers –Running on physically different computers  Created need for reliable, efficient web infrastructures & Distributed mgmt.

Vendor Integration of System Management services  Web-based systems: combinations of network and system technologies  Understanding and management requires integration of information  Management tools became platforms with various “snap-in” components  No standard for “snap-in”  Vendors began including web interfaces in networked devices

Common Information Model  Integration of management information requires definition of concepts and semantics for managed components  CIM also defines interfaces for and relationships between components  “End-to-End” management  General and Reusable concepts

Common Information Model  Complex system represented easily  Uses classes and sub-classes to model systems and component parts  May also define logical entities and services provided

Common Information Model

CPE5013 (c) Monash University 17 CIM - Schema [Abstract, Version ("2.7.0"), Description ( "ManagedElement is an abstract class that provides a common superclass" "(or top of the inheritance tree) for the non-association classes in the CIM Schema.") ] class CIM_ManagedElement { [MaxLen (64), Description ( "The Caption property is a short textual description (one-" "line string) of the object.") ] string Caption; [Description ( "The Description property provides a textual description of " "the object.") ] string Description; [Description ( "A user-friendly name for the object. This property allows " "each instance to define a user-friendly name IN ADDITION TO its " "key properties/identity data, and description information.\n" "Note that ManagedSystemElement's Name property is also defined " "as a user-friendly name. But, it is often subclassed to be a " "Key. It is not reasonable that the same property can convey " "both identity and a user friendly name, without inconsistencies. " "Where Name exists and is not a Key (such as for instances of " "LogicalDevice), the same information MAY be present in both " "the Name and ElementName properties.") ] string ElementName; };

Web-Based Enterprise Management “CIM over HTML”  CIM defines data….  WBEM also defines common protocol (HTTP) and encoding (XML)  Object manager infrastructure (from CORBA)  known as “CIM Server”  Many implementations available

Directory Enabled Networks  Uses CIM as the data storage model  Uses LDAP for message exchange and directory repository  Provides centralised repository of management, object location and configuration info for computing and networking hardware

CIM/WBEM & DMI Management Infrastructures

Distributed Management Trends  Focus on –business solutions –transparent delivery of services  Requires integrated dynamic, rather than isolated static management (eg multi-vendor, not single-vendor solution)  Systems, software and networks managed together in integrated way  Include business knowledge (policies) in management infrastructure

Management: an Integrated Service  Perform usual management tasks: –Acquire inventory data –Transmit notification of events –Maintain statistics and metrics –Read/Write configuration parameters  But using a common mechanism ie. Management port and Business port

Management: an Integrated Service

Distributed Management Alliances  Modern network management includes –Common semantics and models –Integrated business and management services  Many standards organisations need to cooperate on distributed functions –Storage Network Industry Association –Global Grid Forum (OGSI) –Distributed Management Task Force (CIM,WBEM) –W3C (OASIS)

Distributed Management Alliances

Finally….  New world of management is evolving  Need to reduce cost through interoperable services  Being addressed by vendors and customers participating in formation of standards for business and management abstractions and services