1. System Management Issues for the Future Real-Time University Environment
Tom Board
September 22, 2004
Northwestern University Information Technology

2. About the “Real-Time Enterprise”
Application availability
Information integrity
Transaction transparency
Thesis:
A real-time enterprise is too complex to manage with our current methods. To keep users productive, to avoid security breaches, and to meet overall expectations we need new approaches and tools.

3. About System Management
Goal: User productivity
Measured by:
Predictable and reliable transactions
Confident security of all information assets
Minimal application downtime
While enabling:
Efficient operations
Effective application of resources

4. Item: Transaction Transparency
For a single user transaction, all expected secondary transactions between systems take place without intervention
“Real-time” means the time it takes for the user to move between systems that are affected by the transactions

5. Transaction Transparency

6. How: Service-Oriented Architecture
Virtual application integration
“Structured application architecture” defines services and eases maintenance

7. Item: Information Integrity
Authoritative information is current
Current information can be accessed in real-time (what is the fund balance?)
Consistent data item semantics
Data capture is reliable and audited
Business Continuity requirements call for frequent restore points
Can we lose one (day’s, hour’s) transactions?

8. Threats to Information Integrity & Security
Lack of security awareness
Poor software configurations
Exploitation threats
Compromised identities
Poor Business Continuity practices
Information sensitivity
Legal requirements
Opportunity risks
Open file permissions
Open preset accounts
Weak or non-existent passwords
Unpatched software
Unlocked file cabinets
Social vulnerabilities
Post-It™ password reminders
Auto-login settings
Shared NetIDs
No information backup process
No off-site backups
Too infrequent backups

9. Answers to Information Integrity Threats
Lack of security awareness – education; newsletters; required quiz before access
Poor software configurations – desktop scanning; controlled intrusion attempts
Exploitation threats – education; auto scanning of ; desktop scanning
Compromised identities – common identity and reduced sign-on; two-factor methods
Poor Business Continuity practices – education; audit reports; table-top drills

10. Item: Application Availability
Most important: user-perceived availability
Up-time
Response time
Service provider availability
Up-time outside of maintenance windows
Simultaneous sessions
Transaction transparency makes any service only as reliable as the weakest link

11. Availability is Measured End-to-End
We must measure availability, performance, response time, etc., end-to-end.
This quantifies perceived experience
Requires monitoring the complete application path
Transaction measurements and trends are more important than volume metrics
Instead of how many – what was the wait?
Instead of worst response time – distribution and trend of response times

12. Threats to Application Availability
Physical
Malicious code
Denial-of-Service
Poor software quality assurance
Poor capacity planning
If an application is available this hour, then what must we do to ensure that it is available next hour?

13. Threats to Application Availability

14. Capacity - Monitoring is Crucial
Take corrective action?
Response Time or
Transaction Time
SLA goal
What is the interval?
Perceived
Time

15. Dealing with Peak Demands
Static provisioning for peak demand leaves resources idle. Conservative estimates create excess capacity. Both contribute to increased costs.
Excess Capacity
SLA
Idle Capacity
Transactions / unit
Actual Demand
Time

16. Dynamic Provisioning
End-to-End Measurement

17. Using Dynamic Provisioning
Dynamic provisioning for peak demand reduces idle capacity and eliminates over capacity. Result: cost savings.
Allocated pool capacity
SLA
Transactions / unit
Idle Capacity
Actual Demand
Time

18. Answers to Availability Threats
Physical – redundancy and diversity
Malicious code – vulnerability scanning and intrusion detection
Denial-of-Service – session behavior modeling
Poor software quality assurance – new development methods and regression testing
Poor capacity planning – load testing, monitoring and dynamic provisioning

19. Continuing requests for load testing and regression testing software
Work In Progress
Continuing requests for load testing and regression testing software
ITCS is experimenting with dynamic provisioning and end-to-end monitoring software
Dormitory scanning software is under study for possible wider deployment
ADC working on data access policies and role-based security frameworks
Identity management system replacement

20. Summary
The University will become a real-time enterprise under a Service Oriented Architecture
Information integrity and real-time access are vital to support distributed business processes
User productivity will be dependent upon many inter-operating systems – a single degraded service will affect processes throughout the University

21. Summary (con’t)
We need increased security awareness and systems to automatically detect and remediate threats – the network must defend itself
This new environment will overwhelm “seat of the pants” monitoring or uncoordinated approaches
End-to-end monitoring, dynamic provisioning, software authoring tools, and move-to-production testing tools are necessary for NUIT to be both proactive and efficient

22. Questions?