Group tries to steer utility computing

BOSTON - The creators of a proposed data-center standard say their efforts could help remove obstacles in the way of IT executives trying to build utility-based computing infrastructures. Observers applaud the effort but say its chances of survival are slim if the standard doesn't win support from major players such as IBM, Microsoft and Sun.

Outsourcing services company Electronic Data Systems and management software maker Opsware initiated work on Data Center Markup Language (DCML), an XML-based standard for describing the various components running in a data center and how those components interoperate.

By increasing visibility into data-center operations, DCML will help control complexity and reduce management costs, proponents say.

Unruly data centers have become a problem for IT executives as numbers of servers and applications - including dozens of disconnected management systems that don't share information - have skyrocketed, said Marc Andreessen, chairman of Opsware, at an event held last week to launch DCML.

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BOSTON - The creators of a proposed data-center standard say their efforts could help remove obstacles in the way of IT executives trying to build utility-based computing infrastructures. Observers applaud the effort but say its chances of survival are slim if the standard doesn't win support from major players such as IBM, Microsoft and Sun.

Outsourcing services company Electronic Data Systems and management software maker Opsware initiated work on Data Center Markup Language (DCML), an XML-based standard for describing the various components running in a data center and how those components interoperate.

By increasing visibility into data-center operations, DCML will help control complexity and reduce management costs, proponents say.

Unruly data centers have become a problem for IT executives as numbers of servers and applications - including dozens of disconnected management systems that don't share information - have skyrocketed, said Marc Andreessen, chairman of Opsware, at an event held last week to launch DCML.

"Data centers are experiencing an ongoing, continuous onslaught of new technologies," he said.

Opsware and its biggest customer, EDS, along with Computer Associates, signed on as governing members of the DCML Organization, which boasts 25 vendor members.

Companies committing to getting the standard off the ground by early next year include network management vendors such as Micromuse, infrastructure software maker BEA Systems, and software start-ups such as Configuresoft and Relicore.

The proposed DCML standard will provide an inventory of data-center elements, describe how those pieces interoperate and define the various policies that bind them together.

It encompasses a range of data-center gear, including network and storage components; software infrastructure and applications; and Unix, Linux, Windows and other servers.

With this information tied together, companies will be able to more easily reproduce, rebuild or re-provision any portion of their data-center environment, Andreessen said.

Users will be able to automate time-consuming processes such as deploying, upgrading and patching servers. Also, for disaster-recovery purposes, DCML can be used as a blueprint to reproduce a complete data-center infrastructure - including component dependencies, device configurations, operational rules and management processes.

Further, DCML will provide a foundation to enable utility computing, its backers say.

Linking existing IT management systems is a prerequisite to achieving the much touted but still elusive vision of a utility-computing infrastructure made up of self-healing, self-managing, self-protecting and self-provisioning systems.

"A real-time infrastructure requires an integration platform to give IT managers visualization of the components and the service, and to help them automate the process," says Donna Scott, a research director with Gartner.

She says enabling the islands of network, servers, storage and applications to share data will help companies implement a higher-level and more-automated means to manage data centers.