Management Model Roadmap

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.