Managing Management Systems: A Distributed Applications Management Scenario

In today's networks where an arbitrary number of service providers
needs to dynamically exchange customer- and system-related data, the
integrated management of networks, systems and applications is a
challenge. Management systems play a strategic role for enabling
seamless interworking because they contain the management information
that has to be shared between service providers in order to monitor
and enforce service level agreements. However, this interworking is
difficult to achieve: On the one hand, different service providers
have chosen different management systems that are bound to specific,
standardized management architectures and, due to the heterogeneity of
the underlying frameworks, do not interoperate easily. Solutions for
achieving interoperability between heterogeneous frameworks are one
key factor towards integrated enterprise management and have been
studied in the past. On the other hand, the provisioning of
management instrumentation for the management systems themselves is a
yet unresolved problem although the need for such a solution becomes
apparent. Furhermore, management systems are a characteristic example
of distributed applications: Developing a methodology for managing
management systems helps also to understand which information and
services are needed for the administration and control of distributed
applications - an important and particularly complex field of
investigation which is only starting to get attention.

The paper presents a novel approach to this problem by defining a
management object model and appropriate instrumentation for management
systems. It can be regarded as a step towards integrated enterprise
management and is based on the Common Information Model (CIM) and the
viewpoint languages and concepts of RM-ODP; their generic management
models for distributed applications are then refined to handle the
specifics of management systems. A CORBA/Java-based prototype
implementation for managing management systems illustrates the
applicability of our concepts.