DELL + MICROSOFT: Server Management for the …...2004/11/01 · Server Management for the Enterprise Page 1 Introduction A little more than 2 years ago Dell committed to and began

Ptak, Noel & Associates White Paper

DELL + MICROSOFT: Server Management for the Enterprise Abstract

Microsoft and Dell teamed together to deliver an integrated server applications software, operating system, and hardware change management solution. In an industry first, using a single management platform Dell customers will be able to perform all critical hardware and software related deployment, server monitoring and change management tasks for Dell servers running Microsoft Windows™ operating systems and applications. Because of industry standards implemented in Dell PowerEdge™ servers and combined with OpenManage™ systems management software integrated with Microsoft’s ADS, MOM and SMS, enterprise clients will find it easier to deploy, provision, update and fix distributed platforms from remote locations. These innovations will continue in common systems design and the additional tools planned for Dell’s future generation servers. Dell and its partners are committed to deliver to enterprise customers enhanced ease, stability, and consistency in intelligently and automatically executing operational management tasks for both software environments and hardware on distributed servers.

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Server Management for the Enterprise Page 2


Table of Contents

Introduction ...................................................................................................................................1 Progress through Standardization and Integration .......................................................................1

Standardization..........................................................................................................................................1 Systems, Storage and Software................................................................................................................2 Integration..................................................................................................................................................2

The Dell and Microsoft Solution ....................................................................................................3 Deployment Toolkit and Automated Deployment Services .......................................................................3 MOM Management Pack Integration.........................................................................................................4 SMS Patch Management Integration ........................................................................................................5

Customers Directly Benefit ...........................................................................................................6 Benefits Today...........................................................................................................................................6 Future Directions .......................................................................................................................................7

Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................8



Introduction A little more than 2 years ago Dell committed to and began its implementation of a strategy to become the preferred supplier of servers to enterprise customers. As the market for computer server hardware sales become more and more commoditized, Dell recognized that it would take more than exceptional hardware performance and web-based business services for them to become the preferred supplier of servers to the enterprise. Customers were demanding more from their systems and needed more powerful management and control tools to achieve their objectives. At the same time, competition and the global market placed were forcing down prices, profit and operating margins. Customers not only wanted more but wanted it for less money, less hassle and easier to use. Dell began to develop and sharpen a customer-focused strategy already committed to and based on standards-based implementations in both hardware and systems software. This paper examines the results of that strategy. For enterprise users, management of their IT environments had become a major issue. The proliferation of systems and applications as well as the deep integration and evolving dependency of computers with business processes was leading to an operating environment which was much more complex, integrated and interdependent. In this environment, change in the form of infrastructure updates, modifications and changes was becoming more frequent, more complex and more critical. More frequent as an increased sophistication in users led to more frequent need to adapt applications with less time to test and stabilize software. More complex as systems proliferated and interdependencies buried in code or architecture meant error-free implementation of changes occurring more frequently and with more complex interactions became humanly impossible. And finally, more critical as integrated, interdependent customer facing systems raised the consequences of downtime where degraded let alone failure of services could threaten the very life of the business. Traditionally, IT has separated infrastructure management into operational silos. Management and administration were divided into server, application, storage, network, etc. specialties. With the arrival of tightly integrated, distributed, componentized applications this siloed approach proved inadequate. The data center could no longer effectively function divided into separately administered management fiefdoms. To meet business needs, to be able to respond and adapt to the changing demands of the business it became increasingly obvious that an integrated approach to management that addressed the hardware and software operational environment was mandatory. Let’s examine how these challenges might be addressed.

Progress through Standardization and Integration

Standardization Standards have been and remain one of the most effective paths to more effective management. Not surprisingly, as part of their strategy to improve and integrate management functions, Dell began to work with other vendors to aggressively develop, endorse, and implement industry standard management, data collection, and control functions for both the hardware infrastructure and software application and operating system operational environments.



Two years ago Dell asked: ‘If we were to tell you that we had the most automatic, comprehensive, and powerful tools in the world, but that it takes five of our professional services personnel for every system you need to manage, would that add value to the bottom line? Clearly, the answer, which they provided was: ‘No.’ At this point Dell introduced their Scalable Enterprise strategy which was to simplify and enhance service delivery. The customer focused goals for automated, standards-based management were defined and Dell set about the task of delivering on that strategy. Let’s see what they have done. Systems, Storage and Software Dell helped to drive industry efforts to standardize processes and practices for all aspects of system and storage management and control functions. For hardware, they helped define and implement instrumentation specifications that standardized what and how data was to be collected and stored. They helped to set industry wide control standards for what settings could be accessed and changed or re-set remotely to help configure and manage hardware operations. But, to be effective, stored data and control functions have to be accessed and manipulated by management applications. Working through industry-wide standards groups (such as DMTF, SNIA, and others), Dell participated in the effort that led to industry-wide standards for management data formatting, storage and retrieval by management applications. Working with vendors such as Altiris, BMC, Microsoft, Intel, NetIQ, EMC, and Veritas – Dell helped to set operational behavior standards and practices that applied to both hardware and software. This helped to move the industry away from the past profusion of slightly differing formats, failure, and recovery procedures that allowed (and were used by) vendors to differentiate their products. It was just this lack of standard procedures and formats that frustrated earlier attempts to build useful common management and control applications. Dell implemented part of its standards strategy as part of its OpenManage™ systems management software program. OpenManage was part of the standard design requirements for all of Dell (and its partners’) products. Dell, through its aggressive implementation and embrace of standards, helped to drive the larger server industry standards efforts which led to the delivery of hardware that could be managed at a lower cost. One example of their successful efforts are the commoditized server Baseboard Management Controllers which appear in Dell’s newest PowerEdge servers. Other areas were included in the overall standardization effort. Dell was one of the first to deliver systems with standards based management built-in as Dell’s IPMI Base Management Controllers. And, finally, Dell systems and storage products ship with core management software that provides remote deployment, monitoring, and change management functionality.

Integration But Dell’s efforts would not have been sufficient if it had just concentrated on the hardware management side of the enterprise datacenter equation, or only involved software that came from the individual hardware vendor. Today’s complex datacenter environment is increasingly reliant



upon and tied into an interdependent, distributed, componentized operations architecture that requires sophisticated, coordinated management if it is to perform successfully and effectively. The operations architecture includes not only the underlying hardware and its operating software but also applications, middleware and application services. Management of all these disparate parts requires functional coordination in such a manner and to an extent that mandates integrated operation. Therefore, Dell needed an influential partner with experience in software operating systems, middleware and basic applications. Microsoft had the right combination of market presence, depth and breadth of experience and software expertise. Dell and Microsoft combined efforts to deliver an integrated enterprise class management solution for automated server management in the enterprise datacenter. Let’s examine the results of their efforts.

The Dell and Microsoft Solution Two years ago Dell announced a strategy to simplify and reduce the cost of managing the data center infrastructure in the scalable enterprise. One year ago Dell joined with Microsoft to announce a combination of products as part of a comprehensive strategy of systems management offerings for the enterprise. Their integrated strategy brought together Dell’s OpenManage™ systems management software, hardware, and support services with fully integrated Microsoft software manipulation tools to automate and simplify the management of the enterprise data center. The outcome of the coordinated effort will allow enterprise customers to conserve resources and increase productivity while reducing the total cost of server ownership. Let’s look at what was promised, and the recent enhancements.

Deployment Toolkit and Automated Deployment Services Today’s enterprise datacenter operates in an environment requiring rapid and frequent changes – applications have bugs fixed and functionality modified and extended to meet customer demands. Operating systems need updates. Servers have to be rapidly provisioned and re-provisioned as dynamic workloads shift and change. Systems have to be configured, replicated and deployed across the enterprise. Even if servers and systems are located in a single physical location, the task and effort just to keep current with application installations and platform provisioning represents a daunting task. But add the escalating efforts required by a large volume of remotely located systems along with the demands of software and workload adjustment to meet evolving and changing business needs and the task becomes nearly impossible. Dell and Microsoft joined together to provide an integrated solution with the combination of Dell’s Deployment Toolkit with Microsoft Windows® Server 2003 Automated Deployment Services (ADS). Let’s see what this combination does for the enterprise datacenter. The Dell Deployment Toolkit is a suite of enabling tools for PowerEdge servers. The suite has been specifically designed to perform the tasks of pre-operating system configuration, remote server deployment, and server re-provisioning. The toolkit is actually a library of automated ‘best practice’ tools in the form of command line utilities and sample DOS batch scripts. Such a library of proven, automated utilities will free staff time principally by automatically performing mundane, repeatable hardware configuration tasks necessary for server deployment management. By itself,



the Deployment Toolkit provides the flexibility and control to leverage an organization's remote deployment policies and practices. The Deployment Toolkit used in combination with Microsoft Automated Deployment Services becomes a powerful tool for managing and provisioning remote servers. ADS provides rapid, remote deployment of Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Microsoft Windows Server 2003 operating systems onto bare-metal servers. ADS comes with additional functionality that will allow it to manage and administer software to a large numbers of servers as if they were a single machine. ADS can perform its deployment and installation functions with other software including control utilities such as those in the Deployment Toolkit. Let’s quickly examine what the combination can do. So, combining the pre-defined utilities of Dell’s Deployment Toolkit with the deployment and control management of ADS, and the datacenter administrator has a powerful, flexible and cost effective way to remotely manage deployments, server replication and other tasks involved in re-assigning complete systems from one application or business service to another. Since ADS can deploy using other software utilities, the potential application for automated server management and control is limited by the creativity of the operations staff.

MOM Management Pack Integration Dell and Microsoft work together to provide an integrated management solution. The result of the integration of Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) with Dell OpenManage is a product that delivers simplified server operations management. Let’s see how this single management console fits with the needs of the enterprise datacenter. In many enterprise datacenters two management consoles must be used for datacenter administration because of the installed heterogeneous server infrastructure consisting of Dell and other vendor platforms, for example HP. While this approach will work it isn’t an entirely satisfactory approach because of the extra demands on operator time and effort. Few administrators are willing to put up with the problems and inconvenience of maintaining different, separate consoles; for example, one for HP and one for Dell. For some enterprise customers, the solution was to assemble their own homegrown solution. One approach was to use Microsoft’s MOM as an integration platform to pull together the management of the two server types. This approach proved to be effective but carried with it all the support and maintenance headaches of any custom-built, cobbled together solution. Customers expected, indeed, demanded a more integrated, consistent and better performing off-the-shelf solution. With Microsoft already a Dell partner, implementing an enhanced integration with MOM made good market sense. Dell enhanced its overall server monitoring capabilities by plugging directly into MOM. The resulting package reduces operations complexity by allowing a single console to be used to manage hardware from multiple vendors. A single MOM console now more efficiently and effectively manages both HP and Dell servers running Microsoft software. The MOM console can receive and initiate the full Trouble Ticketing and remediation response from an event regardless of which platform type, Dell or HP, launches it. More importantly, MOM



can monitor the applications such as Exchange or SQL Server to ensure mission critical applications are always operational. Let’s examine what has been done there. The Dell Management Pack for MOM integrates directly with MOM to provide complete operations management functionality for Dell server platforms. The server/software environment management function is simplified by reducing the number of separate processes and tools an administrator must use. Fewer tools to learn and fewer processes to maintain translates into direct enterprise savings by reducing the time and money necessary for training and skill level maintenance. Resources (staff time, money, etc.) not consumed in skill maintenance can be used to focus on and resolve business problems. Finally, integration of the tools allows one-to-many management solutions where classes or groups of servers can be monitored and managed as a class rather than individually.

SMS Patch Management Integration Once started on the path of complementary integration more attractive management solutions became obvious. Bringing together Dell’s OpenManage and Microsoft’s SMS Patch management capability to simplify and unify the task associated with applying changes were a logical extension to the product solution suite. Change management deals with managing, tracking, controlling and implementing modifications to hardware infrastructure and application and operating system software. Long recognized as a major source of problems, change management had to be addressed from two directions – 1) hardware and software modifications that make management, implementation and tracking easier; and 2) more sophisticated, automated tools that provide integrated change management capabilities that address the problems in both hardware and software as a single system and capable of being extended across whole classes of machines. Classes of machines are collections of systems and servers that for all intents and purposes can be treated as the same machine. They require an identical, consistent configuration setup. In response, Dell integrated its automated server change management capabilities with the application and operating system change management and distribution capabilities of Microsoft’s SMS solution. This combination of capabilities addresses the customer challenge of managing and implementing updates, new application versions and patches to operating system via a one click update. Because of the complexity of the effort, in the past many customers restricted themselves to performing a BIOS update only once per year. The integrated solution makes it both practical and efficient to more frequently perform inventory checks, BIOS updates, as well as asset status and state assessments. This tool can be used for control and management of both hardware and software assets, once again helping existing staff operate more efficiently and effectively.



Customers Directly Benefit

Benefits Today The most significant proof of the success of a customer-focused strategy comes in the form of the benefits to the customer. Dell’s strategy for integration and automation of operations management functions has clearly benefited their enterprise customers. Let’s look at a few examples. Previously IT administrators had to maintain separate processes and functions for Dell server-based datacenter hardware and software management. This meant maintaining and managing separate, redundant staff, skill sets, and consoles. This entailed a whole collection of associated logistic problems that revolved around monitoring assets, planning and coordinating hardware updates and change management and then doing the same to manage and implement software update and change deployment and implementation. A virtual nightmare of planning, scheduling, and coordinating of overlapping management effort. The approach was a major headache and expense which yielded a far from satisfactory solution for the enterprise datacenter. The problems become an even bigger headache in the face of the pressures on IT management to reduce costs because of today’s scarcity of resources and the continuing tightening budgets. The solution, and the only one that makes economic sense, was to implement IT resource and asset management as an integrated whole. An integrated solution provides for servers, the operating system software, and applications software to be managed as a single system. A combination of core hardware and software management tools are integrated together to function together to provide a single management view of and tool that operates on the total operational environment. Enterprise clients now realize operational benefits from a fully integrated, automated solution that addresses three major problem areas. In each of the challenge areas - deployment, server monitoring and change management - the combined efforts and integrated products of Dell and Microsoft make life easier, more productive and less costly for enterprise IT staff to implement and manage operations and administrative tasks. Let’s look at some details. Deployment Integrated, automated deployment capabilities, a combination of Microsoft services and Dell’s deployment kit facilitates and speeds managing and configuring remote systems from even a ‘bare metal’ start point. The combined solution reduces support costs by speeding installation, decreasing the number of ‘on site’ calls, and eliminating the errors that plague manual installation. The net result is a savings in staff time through more efficient practices and reduction in human-introduced errors with automated, user-controlled, remotely exercised management and control Server monitoring Dell’s OpenManage server management tool plugs directly into the Microsoft MOM console. MOM then acts as a management console for both Dell and HP platforms. This reduces costs by more effective use of existing resources, eliminating separate consoles and skill sets required to manage the data center, improving response services, and speeding remediation



activities. Again, the net result is a reduction in the time staffs spend on having to learn to use multiple different tools to get their job done. Change Management Change management has been long recognized as a major source of operational problems. Patches are typically issued in response to newly discovered code vulnerabilities, viruses or other malicious acts. A single server running an outdated operating system or application can expose an entire organization to the ravages of a virus or expose confidential files. Attention has traditionally focused on the potential problems associated with the security and reliability of operations – which can result when manually installing patches and updates. Incorrectly applied patches or patches and updates that were not applied can expose the enterprise to direct threats to physical and logical security or introduce viruses into the enterprise. There may be performance or operational problems caused by conflicts when applications that are incompatible because of inconsistently applied patches interact. By working together Microsoft and Dell were able to provide an effective suite of fully integrated products that address the painful business problems of their enterprise customers. We have mentioned some of the benefits that accrue. But what of the future, will Dell and its partners continue to work to enhance and extend these benefits?

Future Directions Figure 1 shows Dell’s current plan and roadmap to the future as it plans to deliver seamless infrastructure, management and cost value enhancing innovations. Dell, along with its partners, will focus on the emerging area of Business Services Management. The seamless management of the creation and delivery of business services built on and delivered by means of intelligent, automated, optimized IT infrastructure. The integration of OpenManage software and third-party management tools will form the basis to extend support capabilities and services based management that will include automatic management of the infrastructure including auto-detection and correction of structural (hardware and software) faults. The promised effect will be to further reduce problem incidents and to reduce the time to respond and remedy service events when they occur. This will allow enterprise customers to benefit from the additional system uptime that results from the intelligence added to the maintenance process.



Figure 1 Dell’s Phased Approach © 2004 Dell, Inc.

Conclusion In our opinion, enterprise customers have realized and are poised to realize even more significant benefits the result of the partnership agreements that Dell has formed with Microsoft and its other industry partners. This is evidenced by the products already delivered that simplify operations, improve resource utilization, and provide cost effective leveraging and scaling of enterprise resources in performing operations, administration and management activities. These innovations combine to deliver to Dell’s enterprise customers an increased and much needed level of ease, stability, and consistency in executing management tasks. There has been a lot of discussion, promises made and discounted about what will and will not be delivered in terms of intelligent, automated management and functioning of the enterprise IT infrastructure. It is our firm belief that we will see amazing innovation in the application, responsiveness, adaptivity, and adjustment of the computing and networking infrastructures as they are integrated with and made to more directly respond to the needs of the business. The progress will be the result of steady, hard, customer-focused effort not in great leaps of flashy promises and dazzling technology. Dell, with its partners, is helping to forge that path.


Ptak, Noel & Associates White Paper

This white paper was sponsored by: Dell, Inc. This document is subject to copyright. No part of this publication may be reproduced by any method whatsoever without the prior written consent of Ptak Noel & Associates. All trademarks are the property of their respective owners. While every care has been taken during the preparation of this document to ensure accurate information, the publishers cannot accept responsibility for any errors or omissions. About Ptak, Noel & Associates With a belief that business success and IT success are inseparable, Ptak, Noel & Associates works with clients to identify, understand and respond to the implications of today’s trends and innovations on the future of IT Operations. www.ptaknoelassociates.com About the Author Richard Ptak has over 30 years experience in systems product management working closely with Fortune 50 companies in developing product direction and strategies at a global level. Previously Ptak held positions as senior vice president at Hurwitz Group and D.H. Brown Associates. Earlier in his career he held engineering and marketing management positions with Western Electric’s Electronic Switch Manufacturing Division and Digital Equipment Corporation. He is frequently quoted in major business and trade press such as The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, InformationWeek, San Jose Mercury News, and ComputerWorld. He is author of "Manager's Guide to Distributed Environments," (John Wiley & Sons, 1998). In addition, Ptak was technical editor of “Cisco Internet Architecture Essentials Study Guide: Cisco Internet Solutions Specialist” by Mathew Recore, Jeremy Laurenson, and Scott Herrmann (Cisco Press, 2002). Ptak holds a master’s in business administration from the University of Chicago and a master of science in engineering from Kansas State University. [email protected] November 2004


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DELL + MICROSOFT: Server Management for the …...2004/11/01 · Server Management for the Enterprise Page 1 Introduction A little more than 2 years ago Dell committed to and began