Introduction to File and Print Services
Is This for You? This document set is written to meet the requirements of information technology (IT) professionals who are responsible for the planning, design, deployment, and operations of management services in an enterprise environment. The readers of this document set are expected to have an understanding of its technical details; however, service-level expertise is not needed to follow the enterprise-level discussions and to understand the decisions that are made.
On This Page
 | Introduction |
| Blueprint |
| Planning Guide |
| Build Guide |
| Operations Guide |
Introduction
The tools used for infrastructure management should be designed to automate, centralize, and secure network and system management (NSM). According to the Gartner report "Application Server Management: Best Practices (6th August 2002)," using NSM tools to manage the application server platform provides the best opportunity for automating support processes. NSM is a broad grouping of support and administrative tools that are used to monitor and manage application server platforms, and includes tools provided by a wide variety of vendors for network, system, and device management. Many of these tools are Microsoft-focused and include Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) and Systems Management Server (SMS) for automating service monitoring and system management. The tools also include the basic management infrastructure for remote administration, management, and application server support. IT organizations are using NSM tools to increase the effectiveness of operations groups and reduce the number of operators required to manage their servers. According to the Lieberman Research "Manageability Tracking Study" report prepared for Microsoft, one of the largest influences on the selection of management tools is centered on remote management and troubleshooting. In the report, 67 percent of the respondents (which consisted of small to large-sized organizations) said that remote management and troubleshooting capabilities are the most important factors in making system management decisions. By focusing on remote administration and support, organizations can implement strategies for reducing costs dramatically by:
| • | Making operations personnel more efficient. |
| • | Improving incident response time. |
| • | Reducing the number of operators per server. |
For example, one such strategy is the implementation of a "lights-out" data center, which is one that operates without human presence. Lights-out data centers allow organizations to increase the utilization of IT staff by using the operational staff across several data centers. Strategies like lights-out data centers require operations groups to better organize administrative and support resources so that troubleshooting, maintenance, and other administrative tasks can be executed securely from local and remote locations.
Blueprint
The options for infrastructure management services presented in this blueprint provide a starting point for the design of an architecture to support management requirements in real world scenarios. The management and tool server design concepts that are recommended and implemented in WSSRA have been tested and proven in the test labs and are known to support all the services within the WSSRA scope. Future releases of WSSRA will detail additional services that use this infrastructure management design in addition to providing new scenarios that the design will be capable of accommodating.
Planning Guide
Infrastructure management services provided administrative and support resources on dedicated tool servers. Service administrators used these services to manage and support systems and applications in the CDC and SBO scenarios. The following is a list of these services:
| • | A platform to host administrative tools, resource kits, and support tools. |
| • | Provision of debug symbols, downstream store, and Windows debugger. |
| • | A repository for storing diagnostic files used for supporting systems and applications. |
| • | Provision of remote administration access using Terminal Services, Remote Desktop for Administration, and hardware-based remote management cards. |
There were four tool servers in the CDC site, two servers in the perimeter and another two in the internal network. Each of these servers had a similar set of resources. These tool servers solved the following management problems:
| • | Consolidation of management tools and services onto a few secured servers. |
| • | Securing and enabling of remote administration for systems, applications, and devices in the design. |
| • | Provision of a secure platform for management tools and services for all devices in the design. |
| • | Provision of secure and centralized access to advanced troubleshooting tools like the debugging tools. |
| • | Concentration of network and OOB system management interfaces. OOB system management relates to the hardware and software used to implement emergency management services (EMS). |
Build Guide
This guide provided detailed build guidance and descriptions of the processes that were used to test the infrastructure management services in the WSSRA configuration. Details of test case specifications and results were discussed. Testing results matched the expectations and there was no negative impact to the management system.
Operations Guide
This guide helps the readers understand the extent of operations guidance that is available for the infrastructure management services discussed in WSSRA. This guidance has been tested in a WSSRA environment and the project team deferred to this guidance as the authoritative source of operations content.