This was left as a comment to an earlier blog article:
"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."
Is systems management (or operations management) fascinating, or just necessary? I suspect some people would find it more fascinating than others. Some (including myself!) may even consider it their passion to have an IT environment properly managed; it is highly preferable to not spend time putting out fires.
However, systems management definitely requires resources that often are not available. Although system management costs vary depending on whether that process is manual or automated. An IDC white paper discussing IT labor costs and SMS (http://download.microsoft.com/download/8/0/8/808c50a0-87ef-4e48-ba3f-6c4cc00dd7da/IDC_sms_whitepaper.pdf) shows that labor costs are higher for those IT shops at the "basic" level ($1,320 per PC/year) than at the "rationalized" level ($230 PC/year). These terms are taken from Microsoft's Infrastructure Optimization Model (IO Model), see http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/infrastructure/default.aspx. The IO Model is also discussed in the IDC paper. A "basic organization" does things manually, while a more "rationalized" orgazation has implemented IT best practices and automates whenever possible.
While systems management may not be "sexy", using products such as Microsoft's (or those by other vendors) does have a payback. It does of course require making the initial effort - and the expense - to procure a tool and implement it properly. Part of the resource challenge is to take time to implement a systems management tool while you're too busy putting out those fires to do so. However, you should see the value - and reduced support costs - over time. If you are not using a systems or operations management tool today, I would highly suggest looking into it!
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
Check out an excerpt from System Center Operations Manager 2007 Unleashed, Chapter 3: Looking Inside OpsMgr.
The opinions expressed in this Weblog are those of the writer and may not represent the opinions of Network World.
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It's a Necessity.
Systems Management is just an extension of what I.T Pros/Sys Admins do on a daily basis. I think what a lot of people neglect or ignore is the likelihood that a properly setup Systems Management system could reduce head-count at a company. Ideally those I.T Pros who are made somewhat obsolete will move onto another challenging projects or job. I also think in many cases the ROI on Systems Management products isn't sold correctly. Obviously the upfront costs of deploying and customizing a Systems Management product is hefty but I think in the long run, it will save man power, I.T Pros won't lose out on sleep by constantly getting paged in the middle of the night and on weekends. Other than on-call pay and the ever contested over-time pay, how else do you quantify the gains of people regaining their lives? Fewer people on stress leave? Maybe.
I moved to a team at my company that specializes in Systems Management (I think I mentioned this before) and it's interesting to see how these types of tools can make an I.T Pro's life easier and how they are so sorely under-used, it's like a nervous system for an I.T environment but even I have problems trying to convince some of the other Sys Admins that allowing these tools to do more beyond alerting is a good thing, the reasons I believe are the following:
- No faith in the technology. Something could go wrong but that's what testing and careful scripting is for.
- A lack of undertanding not at the Systems Management level but at a more granular level in their environment which may highlight a knowledge gap that some may not be willing to admit.
- They like the money despite being woken up at 3:30AM.
- They find it a bit creepy that a Systems Management product can react to many of the event conditions that occur in an I.T environment.
- Replacing a large collection of band-aids that keep some environments humming smoothly, with a holistic Systems Management solution is a slap in the face to some veterans. How little do they know that some of these little scripts and manual processes can be rolled into Systems Management solutions.
Basically it gets down to the human factor and when a properly engineered Systems Management solution is put into place people may feel less valued.
Obviously there's a normalization period that takes place when a Systems Management solution is deployed and I've seen and heard - heck I've even been one of those people that cried "This system sucks because it pages out on the slightest thing." Now though being on the receiving end of those cries, I see that if they didn't tell us about various things during the requirements gathering phase or provided inaccurate threshold information of course the Systems Management solution will page out. :)
I think one of the biggest challenges I've had to face is gathering those requirements, even when they are spelled out. :) The documentation my team and I use is being constantly being revised and one of the coolest features I like about Operations Manager 2007 is the Self-Tuning thresholds.
I think what we need to do as I.T Pros that have a passion for Systems Management or are intrigued by it, is find a way to share the huge gains in a properly designed Systems Management solution, show our fellow I.T Pros the advantages to these systems and they are no longer a static event alerting systems but part of the big picture to managing an I.T infrastructure.
Systems Management is a logical extension and compliment to Systems Administration.
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