We present a novel approach of using CIM for the SLA-driven management of distributed systems and discuss our implementation experiences. Supported by the growing acceptance of the Web Services Architecture, an emerging trend in application service delivery is to move away from tightly coupled systems towards structures of loosely coupled, dynamically bound systems to support both long and short term business relationships across different service provider boundaries. Such dynamic structures will only be successful if the obligations among different providers with respect to the quality of the offered services can be unambiguously specified and enforced by means of dynamic Service Level Agreements (SLAs). In other words, the management of SLAs needs to become as dynamic as the underlying infrastructure for which they are defined.
Our work has shown that Web Services, as a typical example for a service-oriented architecture, can be extended in a straightforward way for defining and monitoring SLAs. On the other hand, SLAs defined for a Web Services environment need to take into account the underlying managed resources whose management interfaces are defined based on traditional management architectures, such as SNMP-based management or the Common Information Model (CIM). As a solution to this problem, the approach presented in this paper addresses the integration problem of how to transform a Web Services SLA so that it can be understood and enforced by a service provider whose management system is based on a traditional management architecture, such as CIM.
By: Markus Debusmann, Alexander Keller
Published in: RC22545 in 2002
LIMITED DISTRIBUTION NOTICE:
This Research Report is available. This report has been submitted for publication outside of IBM and will probably be copyrighted if accepted for publication. It has been issued as a Research Report for early dissemination of its contents. In view of the transfer of copyright to the outside publisher, its distribution outside of IBM prior to publication should be limited to peer communications and specific requests. After outside publication, requests should be filled only by reprints or legally obtained copies of the article (e.g., payment of royalties). I have read and understand this notice and am a member of the scientific community outside or inside of IBM seeking a single copy only.
Questions about this service can be mailed to reports@us.ibm.com .