A multivendor systems management technology called the Service Modeling Language (SML) could play a central role in Microsoft's efforts to improve configuration and monitoring of its products. SML is a language for modeling computer systems and networks for systems management purposes. Microsoft and several major IT vendors plan to specify the language, develop a library of models for common components such as routers and database servers, and adopt SML in their systems management products. Management software vendors and integrators should track this effort, which could simplify enterprise systems management, although previous multivendor systems management standards have not led to quantum leaps in simplicity.

Modeling for Systems Management

SML will play a central role in Microsoft's Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI). That project is developing technology to manage software more effectively and enable organizations to reconfigure systems and identify problems quickly.

DSI assumes that developers will one day ship hardware and software products with the information required to manage them, including configuration models that describe the components that the products include or rely on, and health models that describe normal and problematic modes of behavior of products and the types of data that can be collected when monitoring them. Management tools would use configuration and health models to install, configure, and monitor software; for example, a future version of Microsoft's Operations Manager monitoring product might use a health model to determine the root cause of why an application failed.

In Microsoft's original plan, both configuration and health models would be defined in the Microsoft-developed System Definition Model (SDM) description language. Now, Microsoft plans to use SML for the Dynamic Systems Initiative and develop SML in conjunction with other vendors. SDM will thus become Microsoft's initial proposal for SML. Microsoft products that will eventually support SML include Visual Studio, Systems Management Server (to be renamed System Center Configuration Manager), and Operations Manager. The next version of Windows Server, code-named Longhorn and expected in late 2007, will also ship with SML models for use by its new Server Manager configuration tool.

Note that SML will not displace the WS-Management protocol, which Microsoft also has been defining with other vendors. WS-Management specifies a Web services protocol for monitoring and configuring remote systems. However, it does not define or require a format for configuration and health models. SML and WS-Management might be used together in a systems management tool: for example, a console might use the WS-Management protocol to collect data from a system and use an SML-based health model to interpret the data and decide whether the system is working correctly.

Impact Unclear

Other vendors working on the SML specification include BEA, BMC, Cisco, Dell, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, and Sun. By adopting SML in their platforms and systems management tools, the vendors could speed use of SML in applications, which in turn is critical to the success of the technology. Multivendor adoption would also increase the chance that organizations could use a single set of management tools to deal with all of their systems.

Management software vendors and integrators could also benefit from working with the project, which will provide a forum for dealing directly with Microsoft's systems management gurus. SML has not yet been submitted to a standards body. However, the most likely forum for SML work is the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), which includes all the vendors that participated in SML's initial design, and which is also running the WS-Management project.

The history of the DMTF suggests that a multivendor management nirvana will be difficult to reach. The DMTF developed the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) technology, which aimed to define standard interfaces and data formats for monitoring and configuring systems. Although the WBEM technology is extensively supported in Windows (where it is called Windows Management Instrumentation, or WMI) and in other products, such as Sun Solaris, it never has reached sufficient critical mass to displace proprietary management frameworks and more specialized technologies, such as the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

The SML specification is at www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/dsi/serviceml.mspx.

A Microsoft blog that discusses SML is at blogs.msdn.com/sml%5Finsight.