DSI Update

Although Microsoft has taken pains to broaden the definition of the Dynamic Systems Initiative (DSI) to include current technologies such as Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2005 and Virtual Server, the DSI’s real meat is its use of models designed to capture and make use of management knowledge over the entire product life-cycle. This knowledge is embedded by developers when building applications, OS components, and hardware. These models will not only help guide development but also serve as management tools for deployment and ongoing management and monitoring, and they will feature significantly in future versions of MOM and Systems Management Server.

Over the past year, Microsoft has made some headway in defining the structure of two types of models—the Systems Definition Model (SDM) and the Health Model—but the relationship between the two is confusing. Microsoft says that Health Models of the future will be expressible in SDM. The Health and Service Discovery Models of today—both parts of MOM 2005 management packs—will migrate to using SDM in MOM Version 3 (v3).