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Thursday, May 15, 2008
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Author Expert: Kerrie Meyler

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What is DSI? (Part 1)

The Dynamic Systems Initiative, or DSI, is a Microsoft and industry strategy intended to enhance the Windows platform, delivering a coordinated set of solutions that simplify and automate how businesses design, deploy, and operate their distributed systems. Using DSI helps IT and software developers create operationally aware platforms. By designing systems that are more manageable and automating operations, organizations can reduce costs and proactively address their priorities.

DSI is about building software that enables knowledge of an IT system to be created, modified, transferred, and operated on throughout the life cycle of that system. It is a commitment from Microsoft and its partners to help IT teams capture and use knowledge to design systems that are more manageable and to automate operations, which in turn reduces costs and gives organizations additional time to focus proactively on what is most important.

By innovating across applications, development tools, the platform, and management solutions, DSI will result in

  • Increased productivity and reduced costs across all aspects of IT
  • Increased responsiveness to changing business needs
  • Reduced time and effort required to develop, deploy, and manage applications

 

Microsoft is positioning DSI as the connector of the entire system life cycle.

DSI focuses on automating data-center operational jobs and reducing associated labor through self-managing systems. We can look at several examples where Microsoft products and tools integrate with DSI:

  • Operations Manager uses the application knowledge captured in management packs to simplify identifying issues and their root causes, facilitating resolution and restoring services or preventing potential outages, and providing intelligent management at the system level. OpsMgr 2007 is a key component of DSI.
  • Visual Studio is a model-based development tool that leverages the Service Modeling Language (SML), enabling operations managers and application architects to collaborate early in the development phase and ensure systems are defined with operational requirements in mind.
  • WSUS provides greater and more efficient administrative control through modeling technology that enables downstream systems to construct accurate models representing their current state, available updates, and installed software.

 

More on DSI to follow ...

I think

Nobody decides to pursue a career in IT because they find systems management fascinating. That's what a Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) MVP recently told me. And yet, IT professionals' highest priority, according to Windows IT Pro's 2006 Industry Trends survey, is "managing IT infrastructure," and their biggest pain point is "limited budgets and expanding responsibilities." Systems management may not be sexy, but it nevertheless consumes a huge amount of IT energy and effort—not to mention 70 percent of IT budgets.

I think

Suppose this application needed to be deployed. If your application contains the knowledge about its dependencies, that part of the model could be consumed by Systems Configuration Manager to find servers that met those requirements. If the knowledge about how your application needed to be installed was in the model, if could be deployed too, configured and monitored. With knowledge of the applications performance over time, it should be possible to perform capacity planning calculations and predict when bottlenecks will occur.
Sounds far fetched? Not really a lot of what i talked about is possible today if you do-it-yourself. What DSI does is do-it-for-you, or at least it provides the tools, OSes and management tools that enable it.

I would like to get further

I would like to get further information on DS1. May I know how Microsoft plans to deliver the DS1 and when the release is planned?

How would it be advantageous to a software developer? Though you have overviewed, I would like to get the detailed information on this.

detoxifying

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About Kerrie Meyler

Kerrie Meyler, a Microsoft MOM MVP, is an independent consultant and trainer with more than 15 years of Information Technology experience. A previous senior technology specialist at Microsoft, she focused on infrastructure and management solutions, presenting at numerous product launches. More recently, she presented on Operations Manager 2007 and gave several podcasts at TechEd 2007.

Kerrie has worked with Microsoft Learning to develop Microsoft Official Curriculum (MOC) for several courses, including the Implementing Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 course, and did the beta teach for that course.

Kerrie is the lead author of Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Unleashed and Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed

Win one of 15 copies of System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed. Click here for details.

But you don't have to wait to start reading the book. Check out this excerpt, Chapter 3: Looking Inside OpsMgr.

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