Chapter3.Service Management Architecture

Chapter 3. Service Management Architecture

This chapter describes the overall architecture for the management of service delivery on the Web; it forms the framework that later chapters will build on to create a complete design. It also gives some of the relevant history of service management architectures to enhance the reader's understanding of the issues facing management architectures. The history will let the reader see the origins of some of the major management products in the marketplace.

Before the discussions begin, however, it's important to understand that a system architecture defines the components of a system and their relationships, showing how they provide the required system functions and meet the system objectives. The interconnections among the architecture's subsystems are clearly defined, and each subsystem can be expanded to reveal internal details. A good architecture therefore provides a high-level overview for those who need it, while also providing detailed technical information, if necessary.

Any number of architectures can be created to handle the same challenge; the number of potential architectures is limited only by the imagination of the architect. Each can stress different capabilities or organizing principles. Ideally, the selected architecture provides the maximum business value (including functionality, flexibility, match to the organization's culture, and more) while costing the least in funding and effort to build and manage.

Design decisions made within each architecture's subsystem may affect the function and performance of the other subsystems, although the subsystems in some architectures are more tightly interrelated than in others. For example, in a Web service delivery architecture, the decision to use a private network of geographically distributed caching systems has implications for the design of the central Web-serving system. A well-defined architecture helps those managing it to see the implications of a subsystem's design and management decisions on the system as a whole.

This chapter is organized into three sections. The first section provides a brief description of a large-scale Web services delivery architecture along with its business environment. That's because it's impractical to discuss management systems without having a common understanding of the architecture of the systems being managed and the business environmentthe webbed ecosystemwithin which those systems must function. The middle section discusses the history of service management platforms for heterogeneous systems and the design factors and standards that go into them. The last section gives a summary of the service management architecture used in this book and provides references to the relevant chapters.