The Open Group and Manageability: An Overview

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The Open Group and ManageabilityAn Overview
Presentation December 1999 Karl Schopmeyer Chair
TOG Management Program Group k.schopmeyer_at_opengro
up.org
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What is Happening Today?

• Information is one of the Keys to Management
• A common Information Model
• The customer wants management in his terms
• Applications Management
• Service Management
• Business Level Management
• The Customer wants Enterprise Management, not
  just Point Management -- Service Management, not
  just Technology Management
• Management is Big Business
• The Suppliers are beginning to work together

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Enterprise Management (EM) and The Open Group

• Open Enterprise Systems Management is a strategic
  objective for TOG
• Technical and program group devoted to Enterprise
  Management
• A meeting forum for suppliers and users
• A partner with other Standards forums
• Ex. DMTF

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ESM Objectives

• Encourage,support and create EFFECTIVE standards
  in Enterprise Systems Management
• Help advance the art of Enterprise Systems
  Management
• Communicate between users and suppliers
• Help the suppliers understand user requirements
• Help users understand management and open
  management solutions
• Help users understand the art, practice, and
  standards of Distributed Systems Management

Technology
Education
Business
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ESM Organization

• The Program Group (Open attendance)
• Users and suppliers working together to
• advance open enterprise management
• Technical Working Groups
• Preparation of one technology
• Specifications, Reference Code, testing, etc.
• Business Working Groups
• Business support for a technology area to
  encourage market adoption
• Branding, Certification, Marketing, documentation

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Enterprise Management Program - Strategy

• Build on current program activities, supporting
  technology deployment
• Software license use management (XSLM)
• Application response management (ARM)
• Universal management installation agent (UMIA)
• Application Information and Control (AIC) (Was
  AMI)
• Work With WEB Based Enterprise Management (WBEM)
• New programs with an overall coherence
• Manageability (Major New Initiative)
• Service Management
• Business approach to programs
• Concept to market adoption

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Current Work

• License Management (XSLM Work Group)
• Universal Management Installation (UMIA Work
  Group)
• Service Management (Interest Group)
• Application Response Monitoring (ARM Business
  Group)
• CIM Schema extensions for UNIX (Work Group)
• AIC (Application Instrumentation and Control)
  Fast Track
• Manageability (Interest Group)

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Open Manageability

• The objective of the Manageability Initiative is
  to provide
• A set of standard interfaces and standard service
  definitions for manageability components
  (interfaces between management agents and the
  managed entities) such as events, inventory, etc.
  
• A manageability architecture into which these
  APIs and services can fit and which is based on
  the use of CIM as the common data

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Manageability Background

• There are NO effective ways to instrument for
  most managed entities today
• No common SNMP agent instrumentation tools
• No API to generate events
• No way for applications to cooperate in
  management
• No real interfaces to get information to and from
  management systems.
• Many, multiple and often competing agents

Management today tries to work through whatever
information it can get through external
exploration
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Manageability is

• Manageability is the ability to be managed
• Manageability defines how managed entities
  communicate with management functions
• Manabeabilitiy is a major interface between
  different constituencies
• Manager Management Systems
• Managee (Managed entity) Entity to be managed
  (OS, applications, middleware, components, etc.

Manager
Managee
Manageability
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Separate Manageability Management
Management vs. Manageability
Definitions or instrumentation that make a
particular IT resource manageable.
Capabilities that takes advantage of these
definitions to actually perform the activities
associated with managing IT resources.
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Some Rules of Management

• Capturing correct information and knowing what to
  do with it key to good management
• Higher level management will require higher level
  information
• Consistent information semantics must be
  established and preserved
• Management is low priority in software
  development
• Management is not important to the app developer
• If it is difficult, dont do it
• Management means touching everything in the
  environment, not just some things
• Today we manage in a hostile environment
• We take information, it is not given

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Manageability brings together

• Management system suppliers
• Need information to manage
• Software Providers (Applications and Middleware)
• Instrument software for management
• OS suppliers
• OS instrumentation for management
• Market advantage through effective application
  instrumentation
• Customers
• Need the information Information not available
  today
• Want simple and effective tools that integrate
  efficiently

But Why hasnt this been done before?
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We must remember that

• Different priorities and objectives
• Manageability (Instrumentation)
• Simplicity for developers
• Stability and long life
• Multiple interface paradigms
• Management Suppliers
• Flexibility Functionality will grow
• Rich information capture
• Customers
• Interoperability
• The Manageability concept lacks an owner
• Who feels it is important enough to solve the
  problem?
• Everybody wants something, nobody wants to do it

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Some Key Characteristics

• Key characteristics
• Separate elements with loosely coupled interfaces
• Provide interface with major Infrastructure
  (WEBM)
• Extensible interface
• Rich information model
• Support required for multiple management system
  architectures (SNMP, WBEM, proprietary, etc.)

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Manageability needs

• Manageability needs today
• The managed components be instrumented
• There should be a common API(s) so that these
  managed components can communicate with the
  managing systems independently of management
  solution
• Service definitions so the managed components and
  management system have common understanding of
  service management offers
• Common mechanism to define the information (CIM)

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WBEM Managed System
Data Description
Supplier of management data
Transport Encoding
Access
HTTP(S) Server
Data Schema
Applications
Drivers
OS
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Manageability Framework
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Manageability Framework

• Interoperability Layer
• HTTP-XML
• LDAP-XML
• Corba
• (D)COM
• CIM Object Manager
• CIM Schema
• Pipe (high speed /Bulk Data)
• Managed Services
• API (Java, C, etc.)
• ARM
• Events
• Schema
• ARM
• Events
• Etc.

• Services
• Schema
• Api
• Inventory
• Performance
• Events
• Application Management
• Service Levels
• Status
• etc.

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Manageability needs

• Manageability needs today
• The managed components be instrumented
• Their be standard API sets so that the managed
  components can communicate independent of
  management solution
• Service definitions so the managed components and
  management system have common understanding of
  services management offers
• Common mechanism to use the information (ex. CIM)

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Disjoint pieces of Manageability

• No APIs that can provide the interface(s) that
  an applications can instrument to
• ex. Never established a common API even for
  Events
• No clear definition of manageability services
• No clear statement and business case for
  manageability
• Multitude of competing agents that are often
  incompatible
• No clear roadmap
• No buy in from all vendors

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Manageability Framework Goals

• An optioned framework that covers all pervasive,
  mobile,desktop, servers computing systems
• Provides for at least the minimal managed
  capabilities that allows any of the target
  systems to be managed
• Framework must allow for a range of capabilities
  to cover all devices with a variety of
  capabilities

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Objectives of the TOG Initiative

• Define an architecture that will drive effective
  manageability
• Establish standards for a Management Service
  Provider layer
• Integrate existing specifications into a larger
  whole
• Provide an effective interface with Common
  Management Infrastructures (ex. WBEM)
• Provide specifications for specific components of
  the manageability instrumentation

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A Manageability Framework
Plugins For Management Interfaces
Management Infrastructure
Management
WBEM
SNMP
Common Manageability Provider Service
Plugins For Interfaces
ARM
DMI
AIC
XSLM
XML
Common Services
Managed Entities
OS
Apps
Middleware
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Manageability Challenges

• Get all parties to the table
• Major Management Suppliers
• Smaller Management suppliers
• Application suppliers
• OS suppliers
• Users
• Figure out who can drive this program
• Management suppliers, App suppliers, etc.?
• Management of existing apps is still high value
  solution

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Manageability in TOG Today

• Already delivering Manageability pieces
• XSLM Client APIs for license management
• ARM Client APIs for transaction information
• UMIA Tool to aid agent installation
• BUT
• Not coherent
• There is no architecture
• There is no industry leadership for the concepts

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How can we Accomplish This?

• GreenField Create new standards
• Positive We get exactly what we want
• Negative - Long and difficult
• FastTrack existing technologies
• Positive Moves them into the TOG domain
• Negative Minimum possibility to integrate
• Work from existing donated base technologies and
  specifications
• Positive We can modify the starting points
  together
• Negative There is a real work effort
• Note We can control what we get through RFIs

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Open Manageability
UMIA
ARM
Open Manageability Umbrella
AIC
Manageability Program

• Common Infrastructure
• Compatible
• Common view of services

XSLM
From Individual Components
X
Y
Z
UMIA
XSLM
ARM
AIC
Common Provider Services
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Initiative Status today

• Agreement on the need and base requirements
• Looking at alternate technologies
• Initiating architecture
• Working with several technologies
• Java JMX
• XML based instrumentation
• Integrating Manageability with
• Application run-time CIM Schema development
• TOG AIC extension to integrate with CIM, etc.