Introduction

This blueprint presents the different aspects of infrastructure management services that can be used by organizations to support the delivery of mission-critical applications.

The monitoring and management of the increasing number of services available on corporate networks today is a complex task for information technology (IT) professionals. Many of these servers are located in secure or remote data centers that are difficult to access, which adds to the challenge. A systematic approach to management of remote servers not only helps maintain their integrity and security but also overcomes many of these challenges.

For specific implementation details, refer to the Infrastructure Management Services Planning Guide.

On This Page

	Who Should Read This Blueprint
	Knowledge Prerequisites
	Business Need
	References

Who Should Read This Blueprint

This blueprint is written for IT professionals who are responsible for the design of management services in an enterprise environment. The reader of this blueprint is expected to have an understanding of its technical details; however, service-level expertise is not needed to follow the enterprise-level discussions and decisions that are presented.

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Knowledge Prerequisites

The reader of this blueprint is expected to have an understanding of the problems faced while managing servers in remote locations. In addition, knowledge of the following technologies would be useful:

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Business Need

A wide variety of administrative and support resources are required to support various application and server platforms in a data center environment. Secure and accessible administrative resources are needed to solve key problems in managing the systems, devices, and applications in a data center.

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. Refer to the following URL for more details:

www.gartner.com

NSM is a broad grouping of support and administrative tools 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. For more information, refer to the following Web site:

www.lrwonline.com

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:

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 leveraging 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.

Tool servers solve the following client challenges:

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References

Additional reference material can be found at the following links.

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