Dynamic Systems Initiative Update

A Microsoft project, the Dynamic Systems Initiative, is developing technology to manage software more effectively and enable organizations to quickly reconfigure systems and identify problems. Critical to realization of this is the idea that developers should ship software with the information required to manage it. Specifically, developers should ship configuration models that describe the components that software includes or relies on, and health models that describe normal and problematic modes of behavior of the software and the types of data that can be collected on its behavior. Both models would use a standard description language, the System Definition Model (SDM). Management tools would use SDM models to install, configure, and monitor software; for example, a future version of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) might use a health model to determine when an application has failed and an alert should be issued.

MOM V3 will be the first version to supporting monitoring using SDM application and OS components health models; it will be able to use them to identify failing components and trace the root causes of events. Similarly, Configuration Manager 2007 will begin to make use of SDM configuration models, enabling administrators to configure all of a computer’s applications and OS components to match a desired state, rather than configure each application and system component independently.