Data center spec set for debut

Lack of support from IBM, Microsoft, HP and others raises questions about impact.

Proponents of a management specification scheduled to debut next week say it will lay the groundwork for more automated data centers, though lack of support from many key players has cast doubt on the effort.

The Data Center Markup Language (DCML) Framework Specification 1.0 is scheduled to launch next week in Las Vegas at CA World, an annual conference run by Computer Associates, a leading DCML supporter.

The XML-based specification will provide an inventory of data center elements, describe how those pieces interoperate and define the various policies that bind them together. The specification encompasses a range of data center components, from servers to network gear and from applications to infrastructure software.

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Proponents of a management specification scheduled to debut next week say it will lay the groundwork for more automated data centers, though lack of support from many key players has cast doubt on the effort.

The Data Center Markup Language (DCML) Framework Specification 1.0 is scheduled to launch next week in Las Vegas at CA World, an annual conference run by Computer Associates, a leading DCML supporter.

The XML-based specification will provide an inventory of data center elements, describe how those pieces interoperate and define the various policies that bind them together. The specification encompasses a range of data center components, from servers to network gear and from applications to infrastructure software.

Supporters include vendors such as BMC Software, Electronic Data Systems, Mercury Interactive and Opsware, and users such as First Data, Lehman Brothers and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Conspicuous by their absence, however, are some leading voices in the move to a new data center and some of the top data center product suppliers. Companies that have not thrown their weight behind the effort include Dell, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Sun. Some of the major companies, such as IBM, are involved in their own efforts; some note that they are waiting to see how numerous standards efforts shake out. HP says it is keeping an eye on DCML through its partnership with automated data center software maker Opsware.

"If [the DCML Organization] is trying to create a standard for better service management of what is in data centers and they are missing the companies that supply about 90% of the components in data centers, then they are in trouble," says Lance Travis, vice president at AMR Research.

Without DCML, proponents say the new data center will resemble the Tower of Babel, with systems and gear from multiple vendors unable to communicate or execute on automated actions. The lack of communication will prevent heterogeneous products from automatically integrating and dynamically provisioning and reallocating resources in the new data center, they say.

"We are getting a taste of what the future will look like today. Integrating management systems is manual, and there are too many sources of data to make sense of it," says Tim Howes, director of the DCML board and CTO at Opsware. "A typical mature data center could have a dozen management systems in place that don't talk to each other."

Howes says DCML will complement industry standards such as Common Information Model and SNMP.

As envisioned, a modeling tool creates a DCML document describing a particular data center. This document then can be entered in a provisioning and configuration tool that "builds" a fully configured data center environment. As a descriptive language, DCML could be used to create a data center blueprint defining every element that must be configured and provisioned to re-create the environment automatically.

"I've always found that data center management, even when it's done extremely well, is often done uniquely and differently even among different data centers at the same company," says Adriaan Bouten, vice president of IT and business development at USAToday.com, in McLean, Va. Bouten is interested in DCML and says he'd like to see end-user organizations help steer vendor companies toward a computing model that will benefit enterprise IT managers.