Chapter 8. Strategic Management | Solaris System Management (New Riders Professional Library)

$graphics\chic01.gif$

A S PART OF HIS DUTIES, THE SYSTEM MANAGER must ensure that the systems under his control are being managed in a cost-effective yet efficient manner and that they can deliver the level of service required by customers.

Computer systems tend to evolve into collections of systems, and from there into complete environments. This could be the result of the addition of new projects, a corporate reorganization of departments, or a number of other reasons, but the result is the same: The responsibility lies with the system manager. The system manager could quite feasibly inherit, for instance, 10 systems with 10 support agreements from 10 different third-party vendors , each requiring renewal at different times of the year. Failure to manage this important environment could seriously jeopardize the system manager's ability to obtain the correct support if a failure occurred.

A large number of systems that I have personally encountered have little or no documentation ”or, if there is any, it is frequently out-of-date. An interesting analogy can be drawn to a homeowner renting a house to a third party during an absence abroad. Certainly the homeowner would take a detailed inventory so that any items missing or damaged could be easily identified and so that appropriate steps could be taken to obtain compensation or replacement. Likewise, computer systems can be worth millions of dollars, especially when housing vital corporate data, and yet there is no inventory detailing the makeup of the system or how it is configured.

The system manager also needs to address the issue of configuration management. The majority of development projects use a means of version control, such as SCCS, that is tightly managed between releases of the application. However, scripts and programs written by the system administration staff or the database administrator frequently exist in an unmanaged state, often in a user 's home directory. These scripts and programs usually are run by privileged users and are infinitely more powerful than most application software because they can cause severe disruption if inappropriate changes are made without testing. (System backup scripts are a prime example.) Without configuration management and a central repository for such elements, it is virtually impossible to apply any kind of control.

For the system manager to be able to manage his environment in a cost efficient and effective manner, he needs to provide management information that shows how the systems are being used ”or not used. That information can be used to make appropriate, justified decisions on future expenditure and capacity planning, as well as options for continuing support.

This chapter discusses these issues and identifies the options available to address them, including a real-life example of reducing unnecessary support costs through simple analysis and consolidation.

Top