Introduction to Solstice(TM)


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Background: the network-based enterprise / The need for function-oriented management tools / What is involved in enterprise management / Solstice Comprehensive Functionality Approach / Solstice Core Products Today / Heterogeneity / The most flexible approach in the industry / Summary

What is Solstice?

Solstice(TM) is Sun's strategy for enterprise management. Solstice software is an evolution of Sun's commitment to lower the cost of operating the network- based enterprise.

This paper will discuss what enterprise management means moving forward, why flexibility to business change is the most important feature in an enterprise management strategy, what the Solstice approach is, and why Solstice is the most comprehensive and flexible strategy in the industry. While reading this paper, also bear in mind that Solstice products are available today, they are not just promises of direction.

Background: the network-based enterprise

This is a time of continuous business change. Business support systems need to be as flexible and responsive as the business itself to add competitive advantage. Management tools to operate these systems have the same requirements, but in many cases, they have not kept up.

One of the fundamental technology shifts of the last decade to enable responsiveness with less cost is the move toward a network-based enterprise. By using a backbone protocol like TCP/IP, it is possible to move systems quickly and introduce them to different parts of the network without disruption of service to existing nodes. Unfortunately, most software is still being rewritten to be as modular and network-centric as the modern systems they run on.

With the increasing price performance of PCs, workstations, and servers, there is ever more reason to take advantage of this paradigm by moving processing to the desktop. The downside: each desktop requires additional operations support for installing the operating environment, managing desktop disks, backing them up, and the like.

Because there are multi-vendor standards for network computing, customers have more leverage over suppliers than in the 1970s; this encourages a level of heterogeneity on the network which will prove to be the rule, not the exception. The network-based enterprise is multi-vendor by nature. There are going to be at least five types of suppliers who will contribute to enterprise management in most businesses, some of which may be done in house: independent software vendors (ISVs); distributed system environment (DSE) providers, like SunSoft; network and computer system node providers; telecom vendors; and integrators. With this many categories, and often multiple suppliers per category in any given enterprise, integration of their tools becomes a significant and costly challenge.

Management tools for information technology (IT) personnel have not kept up with the change in the infrastructure. In the 1970s, one mainframe CPU could support 200 users. Today, 200 users might share 300 microprocessors in their multiprocessing desktops, servers, hubs and routers. And most of the tools available come from a focus on significantly fewer points of management.

The need for function-oriented management tools

Operations costs in network computing typically exceed the combined costs of hardware and software. In some cases, it can reach more than 70% of the total cost of ownership.

To change, operators need to be able to do more in less time. Ideally, these new problems could just be automated away; this happens, but not very often.

The next best approach is to define similar functions across many types of devices, so one action can be applied at once to many components. If multi- vendor tools applied into these generic functions, it would be possible to just focus on reducing cycle time in accomplishing the task at hand. For example, if there is a point of failure, and the operator can be signalled in a consistent way whether it is a system, a network, or an application service issue, it would be much easier to organize a help desk and troubleshooting teams. If the tools are consistent and integrated, it would lower training and operations cost as well.

These tools would need to be comprehensive. They would need to be the best of class in a constantly changing industry. They would certainly need to manage heterogeneous systems and network devices. Since standards are often in place regarding operating environments, the tools would have to support multiple platforms, both in hardware and operating environment.

But most importantly, the tools would have to be flexible to any number of changes. They should be flexible to scale upward to match the growth of the enterprise network itself; but like the network, they should grow through distributing tasks, not adding a central bottleneck. They should support multiple users at once for the largest data centers, but users should not be locked to their desks. With all those computers in the enterprise, it is just as likely that an operator will be trying to manage from somewhere else. And the tools should be flexible to cooperate with other tools from many vendors which may already be in place.

Distribution, multiple active operators and multiple vendors supported - if there is not a strong level of integration, it could become just as hard to support the management tools as it is to support the environment itself. An integration strategy is also fundamental to the success of management in the network-based enterprise.

Solstice

In astronomy, a solstice is either of the two most distant points in the earth's orbit; it defines the complete span. It is also considered a turning point. It suggests change which can be planned.

The Solstice enterprise management strategy enables flexible support of the complete span of the enterprise. It is an evolution of Sun's commitment to control operations costs in network computing. Sun helped invent and refine network computing for the last ten years, and Solstice is the result of knowing the problem well from all angles.

What follows is an introduction to the Solstice approach to comprehensiveness and flexibility in enterprise management.

Comprehensive enterprise management

The Solstice strategy for comprehensive enterprise management is to work cooperatively with the leading vendors in the field, and to offer cornerstone products as required to enable a complete, integrated, scalable, heterogeneous solution.

The following will define enterprise management, describe the Solstice approach to delivering comprehensive functionality, explore Solstice core products, and discuss critical heterogeneity and multi-platform strategies.

What is involved in enterprise management

There are a number of functions constituting enterprise management, but each has several sub-functions. Different analysts break the problem up differently, but the list usually centers around the following fundamentals.

In the future, there will be no separation between system and network management. Systems will have networking built in to them, and network hubs and routers will have attributes of computer systems. While operations groups may divide labor by geography, by site nets vs. backbone services, or other attributes, the following functions will apply to both systems and networks.

Fault/Event and Performance Management is live performance data analysis, historical logging and trend analysis, and event management automation allowing software to attempt to refine problem definitions before an operator becomes involved. This area has been the principal beneficiary of emerging technologies like the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).

Help Desk tools is trouble-ticketing systems, bug database browsing, and association tools to gather intelligence about known problems and track repairs.

Management Accounting is asset/inventory management and resource usage billing, which become increasingly difficult when distributed users can add software and components on their own.

Security Management is authentication, authorization, and network firewalls. Along with the usual login passwords of multi-user systems, the network introduces new points of security provision. The most important may be "firewall" technology to prevent hacker access from the Internet.

Workload Management is batch job scheduling and task distribution. These technologies are much more complex in a network environment than in a single-system, but they can be much more effective, since there are potentially more systems to which to distribute jobs.

Configuration Management is what most people think of when they picture the phrase systems administration: configuring hosts, users, groups, printers, network ports, and databases. It takes a lot of time, and it can cause a lot of problems if it is not done consistently. But the same issues are now happening on network devices. Configuring complex virtual networks in modern hubs, switches and routers can be very complicated, but very powerful.

Software Management is installation and revision of desktop operating environments and applications, keeping track of revision levels and licenses, and application management for some applications such as databases and objects, which provide services requiring additional levels of management and control.

Storage Management is disk striping and logging file systems, disk mirroring, high availability features like RAID and failover strategies, and management of alternative storage systems for archiving and hierarchical storage management (HSM). All data needs to be archived in case of problems, but in a networked environment, it is impractical to have each user back up his desktop individually; there must be a network-based backup strategy.

Support Services. Even with all of the functions above performed in house, some services are generally outsourced, like disaster recovery services. It is also useful to remember something most of us overlook: telephone service is actually an outsourced network management service. Over time, as telecom companies provide more and more data networking, they will also start providing more of the other management services listed above.

Solstice Comprehensive Functionality Approach

There are four categories of Solstice products and services.

Solstice core products provide the maximum leverage and integration facilities for the rest of the program. There are a large number of these products. But prior to Solstice, they were often listed only as part of the technology they managed. These products are listed in the next section.

If there are superior products that are already available from established vendors, SunSoft will price list these applications to offer a complete, general purpose solution. Some examples of this is Solstice(TM) Backup(TM), which is based on the Legato NetWorker(TM) product, and Solstice(TM) Firewall-1(TM), which comes from Checkpoint.

Solstice Compatible Applications are a new category. If a third party application has been proven to integrate with standard Solstice interfaces, they will be separately listed as Solstice Compatible. This gives our customers the assurance they can trust in advance how integrated something will be. Solstice Partner Applications have always been part of Sun's Catalyst program, but now they will be called out in a separate section to make sure they are up to date and easy to find. This group currently includes more than 300 best-of-class applications from the leading software vendors in the world. Because of Sun's commitment to the network-based enterprise, and because of the unit volume of Solaris(TM) (and resulting ISV business opportunity), Solstice offers more quality and selection in enterprise management applications than any other approach.

Solstice Solutions are a significant new category, and it is unique in the industry. Sun has reviewed its portfolio of Solstice Partner Applications with both technical evaluations and user satisfaction surveys. The result is a list of solutions from third parties actively endorsed as high quality by Sun.

Solstice Solutions vendors are partnering with Sun in a certification testing program to ensure compatibility with the Solaris software environment, Solstice core products, and complementary ISV products. This simplifies the process of safely constructing multi-vendor enterprise management solutions, and provides assurance these products will be well integrated with the Sun environment.

Through these categories, Solstice makes it easy for all the products to work together. Price-listing makes them easy to buy and support wherever Sun products are sold. The Solstice Compatible applications category lets customers size up product integration. Solstice Partner Applications remain the most comprehensive set of best-of-class management applications in the industry. And with Solstice Solutions, it is easy to learn which ones are proven leaders.

Solstice Core Products Today

Not all functionality categories currently include Solstice core products. Since Solstice is an evolution of Sun's strategy, new work is underway in all of the categories above, including this. Today`s products include:

There are three aspects of heterogeneity that need to be discussed. What is managed; whether the application tools are from multiple vendors; and how to pull it all together. The following section will discuss Solstice's multi-platform attributes, or what systems the management tools themselves require.

Managing anything in the enterprise

There is no compromise in a well-considered enterprise management strategy. If the solution does not let a customer gain control of an enterprise whose nodes are fully heterogeneous, it is not complete. Solstice enables management of the complete range of multi-vendor managed objects.

Leveraging Innovation from Partners

There is a fundamental law of innovation: it happens. The most important corollary to this law is: it usually happens somewhere else.

Solstice has to be defined by one key fact: most of the smart people in the world do not work at Sun.

Solstice means to do everything possible to take advantage of the many vendors who contribute excellent solutions to enterprise management problems. This heterogeneous approach is what led to the five categories of Solstice solutions, some from SunSoft and most from third parties, discussed above.

Pulling it all together

In order to provide integration between all the things that need managing and the application tools in the Solstice programs, Solstice core tools provide the glue to make it all work together easily. This glue, management services, simplify the diversity of the many kinds of management protocols and management objects so it is possible to have unified processes around unified functions. Management services do this with a high level object model, though which any particular object can be managed. Solstice is the only major strategy with this simplifying approach. See the section below on integration below for more details.

The three types of management functionality, managed objects, management services, and applications, are able to run on different machines across the network. The integration strategy of Solstice assumes this distribution approach as the base standard. This not only enables scalability through distribution, it also enables the multi-platform strategy described below.

So, for example, Solstice SNM can manage any of the great variety of devices which support the SNMP protocol. But it can also support DECnet devices when used in combination with the SunLink® DNI gateway, which provides an adaptor, or "proxy" to the DECnet NICE management protocol. When used in combination with a Solstice compatible partner application from NetTech, Solstice SNM can manage SNA networks. With the SunLink CMIP gateway, it can manage OSI stacks. And since it is an open platform, users can extend it to adapt to other more unique requirements if they arise. And all of these services are available to Solstice Partners, through open platform interfaces.

Similarly, Solstice Backup software offers clients to allow backups over the network from more than twenty two different vendor systems. Solstice PC management provides configuration management of a Windows PC, and it provides a standard SNMP agent so Solstice SNM or Solstice Enterprise Manager can provide fault/event and performance management of the same desktop.

Multi-Platform Services

In addition to heterogeneity, want to make sure they are able to leverage the investment they have made in particular hardware or desktop standards for running the management tools themselves. To support this requirement, Solstice core products and management services will support multiple platforms.

Solstice applications will be available on two major operating environments. They will be available on Solaris (for SPARC®, x86, and PowerPC(TM)) and Windows (or Microsoft Windows NT) on x86. The first example of this is Solstice PC management technology in SunSoft's SolarNet product line, which not only administers PCs, it also uses a Windows desktop as its application engine. Over the next year, SunSoft will also enable Solstice SNM to be operated from a Windows or Microsoft Windows NT console, in addition to the SPARC and x86 solutions already available.

Solstice management services will be available on Solaris for SPARC systems, x86, or PowerPC.

Together, this approach gives customers the opportunity to separate the management tools decision from the hardware decision in their operations environment. But it does not sacrifice the need for integrated, powerful comprehensive management services

The most flexible approach in the industry

By separating applications, services, and managed objects across the network, Solstice software takes full advantage of the power and flexibility of network computing. By integrating these components using network computing mechanisms, Solstice can scale through distribution and respond quickly when business conditions ask the network to be reconfigured. Solstice embodies some approaches other strategies have just started to consider.

Solstice flexibility features

Taken together, the flexibility features of Solstice described above give operators an unparalleled degree of responsiveness to business change.

Integration strategy

With this flexibility comes a need to offer multi-vendor integration. While some of this has already been described, it is useful to see the strategy as a collective force.

Summary

Solstice is an evolution of Sun's commitment to lower the cost of operating the network-based enterprise. Sun helped define network computing and understands the most about how it should work. Solstice offers the kind of solutions customers really need for the modern enterprise.

Solstice provides a comprehensive suite of best-of-class, heterogeneous, multi- platform solutions from Sun and other leading vendors. Solstice leads the industry in flexibility, making it the right choice in a any business where change happens. It is a better approach.

Most importantly, this is not just a vision. Solstice products are shipping and supporting real enterprises today. " 1995 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. 2550 Garcia Avenue, Mountain View, California 94043-1100 U.S.A.


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