Microsoft, partners have work to do on management technology

Microsoft uses Management Summit to detail Dynamic Systems Initiative road map

By John Fontana, Network World
March 29, 2007 03:21 PM ET

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SAN DIEGO – Despite touting technology this week designed to let users integrate management platforms using modeling technology, Microsoft and its partners are missing key specifications that will take months to complete and years to roll into products.

The company used this week’s Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) to unveil a 14-month product road map for the company’s Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), a 10-year plan to build a Windows management platform.

DSI tools
Microsoft this year and early next will upgrade all the core tools that support its Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI), a plan to create a management platform for Windows. Going forward, support for emerging modeling standards will be added to foster integration with other management tools and platforms.

System Center tools	What’s on tap	Availability
Operations Manager 2007	Modeling support still proprietary	April 1
Configuration Manager 2007	Model configuration on network and monitor	Sept. 2007
Service Manager 2007	Aggregation point for modeling data	First public beta in 30 days; ships first half of 2008
Data Protection Manager 2007	Backup/restore tool expands scope to include tape backup	Sept. 2007
Virtual Machine Manager 2007	Watchdog for entire virtualization environment	Sept. 2007
Operating Systems
Windows Vista	Support for SDM/SML*	Shipped
Longhorn Server	Virtualization technology one pillar of management platform	End of 2007, but hypervisor virtualization comes in 2008
Development tools
Visual Studio “Orcas”	Limited modeling support today gets dramatically improved with Orcas version	Late 2007 or 2008
* Systems Definition Model (SDM); Service Modeling Language (SML) Related Content

Click to see: DSI tools

Microsoft’s message was that corporate users finally will get their hands on DSI-enabled tools, such as System Center Operations Manager 2007 and Configuration Manager 2007, to start testing the worthiness of the four-year-old DSI vision.

Experts and users alike acknowledge that is a major step, but what was left unsaid is that significant gaps -- in terms of providing standards-based modeling technology key to cross-vendor integration -- still need to be filled.

Models provide operational information, or knowledge about each component of an IT system, and store it in a standard format, or schema. The models are used by management and monitoring tools to paint a big picture of all the moving parts associated with running an application or service. When one of those parts deviates from its model, the problem is pinpointed and corrected quickly, so the entire application or service does not crash.

The goal is a self-managing, self-healing network with better reliability, reporting and automated response/troubleshooting that makes administration less expensive and more consistent.

Users say that initial rollouts of modeling technology won’t be easy but the benefits will increase year after year.

“Modeling is a challenge we need to step up to because it represents the start of getting to truly automated systems,” says Jack Story, chief technologist for EDS. “When you look at service-level agreements today, what we want to build toward is business-level agreements and solution-level agreements.”