Basics of the company's IT systems infrastructure. Enterprise IT infrastructure management. Automate the installation of operating systems, applications and updates

In the early 1990s. the process of formalization and regulation of relations in the field began corporate governance- Corporate Governance aimed at efficient use capital and taking into account the interests of a wide range of stakeholders. Requirements for further growth and improved business efficiency can be realized mainly through continuous improvement and development of ICT, creation of corporate-level IP, which is associated with large-scale investments and large financial risks.

Information Technology Management System is understood as “the structure of relationships and processes for choosing the vector of development of an enterprise and its control, aimed at increasing its value with a balanced risk in the field of information and related technologies.” The development of the management system is based on the IT strategy, and the ICT management process links IT processes, material, labor and production resources, as well as information to achieve business goals.

ICT governance must ensure:

• ? developing an IP and technology development strategy consistent with the business strategy;
• ? optimization of resource costs for the functioning of the ICT system;
• ? reliable and efficient operation of IT services provided to business;
• ? continuous monitoring and management of the activities of IT departments.

Approaches to IT management began to take shape in the late 1990s. in the form of IT Governance (“information technology strategy”).

In the United States, the Klinger-Cohen Act was adopted in 1996, which can be considered the first law on IT governance reform. It obliges government agencies to focus on the results of investments in IT, and requires the management of each agency to build processes that guarantee maximization of returns and minimization of risks from their use.

The International Association ISACA, which provides management, maintenance and audit of information systems and technologies, on the one hand, and the Information Systems Audit and Control Foundation (ISACF), on the other hand, have successfully worked in the field of IT management and audit. They organized for the purpose of development information technology management system methodology IT Governance Institute (ITGI) In 2003, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act was adopted, which required the use of ITGI-recommended methods for monitoring the processes and results of ICT management. ITGI’s mission is designated as helping managers (. leaders) in their responsibility for the relationship between IT processes and business goals, ensuring the value of ICT for business, measuring the productivity and efficiency of IT processes, and appropriately allocating resources to reduce the negative consequences of risks. Russian Federation is an associate member international organization ISACA, which also carries out systematic activities in adapting international standards and methodologies for IT systems.

The management term Governance means the process of keeping a control object under control. ITGI defined IT Governance as a structure of relationships and processes that direct and control an enterprise to achieve its goals through the use of IT and subject to the balance of the effects and risks of their use. At the same time, IT Governance is the responsibility of the board of directors and senior management, an integral part of corporate governance (Enterprise Governance) and consists of key concepts leadership, organizational management structure and management processes to ensure that IT functions support and implement business strategy and business goals.

The principles for building a strategic IT management system should be:

• ? Accountability for each action or decision, when the reasons for each action are clear and each decision is explainable, based on clear expectations;
• ? transparency of objects, decisions and actions;
• ? Disclosure of important information to all interested parties;
• ? independence of decisions from the interests of individual groups;
• ? clarity of expectations (Clear Expectations).

The goals of IT Governance are:

• ? bringing the IT system into line with the needs and realities of the enterprise and achieving the promised benefits;
• ? providing the enterprise with new opportunities and maximizing the impact of existing ones;
• ? responsible use of IT resources;
• ? adequate IT risk management.

Goal setting and motivation in relation to the ICT system should pass to the heads of business units, and the ICT system itself should be integrated (built into) the business process management system. The Chief Information Officer is a representative of senior management responsible for the results of the use of ICT in the corporation and business units, and is assigned goals related to the success of business. Business managers may be given partial responsibility for the use of IT services.

If the term “IT Governance” means activities related to goal setting and control, then the term “GG Management” means the management (leadership) of people in order to achieve set goals. The following concepts are also distinguished: IT management, IT supervision, IT trusteeship, on the one hand, and IT management, strategic management IT, on the other hand. The development of standards in the field of IT Governance is carried out by the US General Accounting Office, IT Governance Institute, UK Office of Government Commerce, and The Institute of Internal Auditors. In addition, large companies (Microsoft, Wall-Mart, Siemens, etc.) have their own methods and internal standards for managing IT processes.

According to ITGI, ICT governance should be the responsibility of the board of directors and senior management, an integral part of the corporate governance system. The conceptual foundations of IT Governance are:

• ? creating an IT strategy aligned with business requirements (IT is Aligned with the Business);
• ? business support from the IT system, assistance in obtaining maximum benefits (IT Enables the Business and Maximizes Benefits);
• ? responsible use of IT system resources (IT Resources are Used Responsibly);
• ? appropriate IT risk management (IT Risks are Managed Appropriately).

The mechanism of the IT Governance system can be schematically depicted as shown in Fig. 17.1.

Rice. 17.1.

• Corporate governance is a concept that emerged in the 1990s. and supported by leading corporations and major stock exchanges. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) developed a set of guidelines in 1999 called principles of corporate governance. They were supported by the G7 Finance Ministers and included in the OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises (MNEs), in the section on disclosure and transparency.
• Access mode: http://www.isaca.ru/upravlenie/s/cb47aa505fclb78a2f-f82e5369534cll.
• United States Government, Clinger Cohen Act of 1996 and Related Documents. Access mode: http://www.oirm.nih.gov/policy/itmra.html. http://www.army.mil/ar-mybtkc/docs/CCA-Book-Final.pdf. The US General Accounting Office has prepared regulations regulating the management of investments and risks associated with IT: “Assessing Risks and Effects: A Guide to Making Decisions on IT Investments for Government Agencies”; “Guide to maximizing the success of SU - Chief Information Officer, head of the IT department”; “Methodology for assessing and increasing the maturity of the IT investment management process.”
• ISACA was founded in 1969 for financial auditors in IT control and is the world's leading professional body. ISACA develops and disseminates standards for ICT auditing.
• ISACF was founded in 1976 to conduct research in the field of IT management.
• Access mode: http://www.itgi.org.
• Enterprise governance is a relatively new informal term that can be referred to as in various ways management of the organization. The Information Systems Audit and Control Foundation (ISACF) defines it as a set of responsibilities and practices implemented by boards and senior management to provide strategic management to ensure that objectives are achieved while risks are adequately managed and resources are managed responsibly.

IT infrastructure and process management - ITSM (IT Service Management, IT service management) is a modern approach to managing and organizing the provision of IT services, focused on meeting the needs of the company's business activities. Solutions built in accordance with ITIL v2 and v3 guidelines, including Last update ITIL 2011 Edition - a collection of proven international practices organization of IT processes, help to cope with all the difficulties in managing the information infrastructure of an enterprise and its personnel involved in the provision and support of services. The success of enterprise IT infrastructure management is largely determined by experience internal division or an outsourcing company in this area.

At the initial stage, solving management problems involves identifying the results expected from the work of information services, an objective assessment of the state of the IT management system and subsequent planning of measures aimed at its optimization. In each specific case, an individual concept for the development of an IT infrastructure management system must be developed. The main tasks facing the head of the IT department are to quickly respond to requests from enterprise employees and quickly eliminate any failures that arise. To solve them, it is necessary to organize high-quality user support and customer support.

Support Desk Requirements:

• automatic registration of incoming applications;
• well-established and strictly regulated support process;
• availability of a process control and optimization system;
• the ability to evaluate user satisfaction;
• training staff to work with the automated system.

Another key task is to control the changes occurring in the infrastructure. For this purpose, solutions are used to inventory software and hardware and automatically obtain data on the IT infrastructure in order to take into account changes in the composition and settings of its components.

Advantages of these solutions:

• creation of an automatically updated unified asset base;
• regulation of changes to the infrastructure;
• quick troubleshooting;
• automated reporting preparation.

Specialized solutions offered by outsourcing companies help them competently organize planning processes, as well as deployment and provision of IT services, which allows them to achieve the required level of service quality. Monitoring systems for the quality of services and IT infrastructure components provide reliable control. Effective management IT infrastructure of an enterprise is impossible without constant monitoring, which allows you to obtain up-to-date information required to make the right decisions to improve the quality of services provided.

As a result of use modern solutions in the planning, deployment and delivery of IT services occurs:

• formation of the structure of the service catalog and templates for describing IT services;
• implementation of them financial planning;
• fixation the required level provision of services based on SLA;
• introduction of monitoring of key service indicators in accordance with the Service Level Agreement.

Recently, solutions aimed at automating IT infrastructure management processes using software and hardware systems created by leading manufacturers, including BMC Remedy, HP Service Manager, Axios Assyst, have become widespread.

Certification according to the international standard ISO/IEC 20000, which indicates the quality of IT services and serves as an important indicator of the effectiveness of information processes in relation to the company’s clients, is also the key to the reliable functioning of its IT infrastructure.

Special tools for monitoring and managing IT infrastructure help plan its necessary modernization and development, significantly reduce the number of labor-intensive routine operations performed manually to set up user workstations, reduce maintenance and support costs, while at the same time increasing the reliability and quality of information services. For each enterprise, a software solution should be selected individually, only after the IT structure and associated business processes have been studied in detail.

Experts believe that the most justified choice for a Microsoft-centric infrastructure will be Microsoft System Center. Components this decision needed for:

• secure, scalable OS and application deployment;
• end-to-end service management;
• storage system management, backup and recovery in a Windows environment;
• server asset management, configurations, desktops and mobile devices;
• protecting applications and data.

In large companies, where the IT infrastructure is organized on the basis of equipment and software from different manufacturers, specialized software from the largest international vendors is used, including IBM Tivoli, HP Service Manager, MS Service Manager, BMC Remedy, which supports most operating systems, hardware platforms, databases and business applications (IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, etc.).

Solutions include systems:

• management of software and hardware configurations, installation and updating of applications;
• managing the degree of availability of business services;
• monitoring and management of engineering equipment, server and peripheral equipment, programs on computers and servers;
• license control installed software;
• backup and recovery of information;
• management of data storage and protection systems;
• automation Service Desk.

ITSM systems developed by domestic companies have now proven themselves to be highly effective solutions, and they continue to be constantly improved and developed. Their use allows Russian enterprises improve the quality of functioning of internal IT services.

Effective IT infrastructure management systems are based on the ITIL library, which contains best practices for organizing the operation of IT infrastructure and combine a repository of information about it and the tools necessary to serve user requests. Electronic documentation Infrastructure Management System (CMS) provides specialists with the ability to quickly obtain the required information during the processing of applications. The HelpDesk module is necessary to respond to user requests and provide high-quality service management. IT management should always use a systematic approach, which is the key to its effectiveness. ITSM solutions help enterprises improve IT infrastructure management, control the quality of IT services and reduce their costs.

To ensure the successful functioning of an enterprise, its IT department develops information infrastructure(applications, servers, disk arrays, networks), allowing the provision of service at the appropriate level.

The historically established way of building IT departments fully reflects the structure of the information systems used. Moreover, each specific department supports a specific information system. With this approach, as a rule, there is no effective system interactions with business users and problems arise with determining the quality of the services provided.

Together with the first information systems there was a need to manage corporate infrastructure.

Information technology in companies is usually understood as a set of information systems that provide support and automation of existing business processes.

The IT used in the service differs in a number of features:

• The variety of applied IT, which is associated with the presence of a large number subject areas related to the service sector and their diversity.
• IT intellectualization. The service must implement the entire range of intellectual services related to individualization, i.e. with more efficient operation of the product in the specific conditions of its use by a given consumer (or with the expansion of the scope of usefulness of the product for him).
• Unification and standardization, the need to take into account Russian and international standards regulating the use of IT in the service sector.
• Individualization of IT, focus on a specific user. The success of service activities is determined by the demand for the service offered and how accurately and timely the service enterprise is able to determine the needs and individual preferences of each of its clients, offering a product or service at a higher level than its competitors, which is possible thanks to IT.
• IT scalability to meet the needs of both small and large enterprises service.
• IT adaptability, the ability to meet the diverse demands and needs of clients, and to transform directly in the service process.

Information technology is a system organizational structures, ensuring the functioning and development of the enterprise information space and means of information interaction. The basis of information technology is IT infrastructure.

Infrastructure(lat.infra - below, under and naT.structura - structure, location) - a complex of interconnected service structures or objects that make up and/or provide the basis for the functioning of the system

Information technology infrastructure (IT infrastructure)- this is an organizational and technical unification of software, computing and telecommunications tools, connections between them and operational personnel, ensuring the provision of information, computing and telecommunications resources, capabilities and services to employees (divisions) of the enterprise (organization) necessary for the implementation professional activity and solving related business problems.

The IT infrastructure includes a set of various applications, databases, servers, disk arrays, network equipment and provides consumer access to information resources. IT infrastructure becomes the technological component of any service and ensures its provision in accordance with agreed rules and procedures.

Enterprise IT infrastructure is a unified set of software, technical, communication, information, organizational and technological means to ensure the functioning of the enterprise, as well as means of managing them.

To provide effective activities modern enterprises need an IT infrastructure consisting of an integrated set of systems, programs and services. The IT infrastructure must be holistic, as reliable as possible, well designed, have a large margin of safety, and comply not only with current state business, but also take into account its development in the future.

The core IT infrastructure is the technological foundation for the operation of other layers of the enterprise architecture. Its correct design allows:

• Reduce IT costs;
• Simplify the modernization of existing infrastructure;
• Minimize the likelihood of operational downtime or system failure;
• Maintain the security of the organization's infrastructure at the proper level;
• Ensure simple IT infrastructure management;
• Increase the reliability of the organization's IT infrastructure.

One of the conditions for the effective functioning of the IT infrastructure is the well-established practice of its operation. The operation of the IT infrastructure should be based on policies and procedures developed and established as corporate standards. The distribution of functions and tasks within the IT department should ensure timely Maintenance all elements of the IT infrastructure.

Maintenance is a set of measures at the software and hardware level, carried out at the stage of production operation and aimed at ensuring the required reliability and efficiency of the information system.

At the moment, we can distinguish the following group of tasks solved by the IT department:

• Ensuring efficiency, accessibility, and confidentiality of processed information.
• Ensuring the operation of IT infrastructure.
• Preventing and eliminating failures.
• Crisis planning and management.
• Providing automatic monitoring of IT health.
• Ensuring the reliable functioning of the IT infrastructure.
• Ensuring information security.
• Equipment modernization.
• Minimizing the cost of maintaining IT infrastructure.

Ideally, the IT infrastructure responds to environmental changes

functioning, increasing load, tightening business requirements, while maintaining its functionality, integrity, readiness, and the agreed level of security. Market development forces organizations to change business models, which, in turn, requires adequate changes in the IT infrastructure.

Components of an enterprise IT infrastructure

Over time, the composition of the IT infrastructure has changed.

In the days of mainframes, the infrastructure was:

• communication lines,
• modems,
• energy supply systems,
• conditioning.

During the development of local networks, the infrastructure remained the same, but the structure of its elements became more complex.

The transition to global networks has further complicated this concept.

At the same time, the complexity increased:

• by increasing the number of elements,
• connections between them,
• due to complication internal structure elements, redistribution of functions between them.

For example: channel management programs have moved to managing network devices. That is, in parallel with the increasing complexity of the equipment, the mathematics became more complex - infrastructure management programs

The standard complex network infrastructure of any company includes the following components:

The physical composition includes:

• wiring, routers,
• switching devices,
• servers, desktop computers,
• cable system;
• passive and active network equipment;
• client workstations;
• additional equipment (printers, faxes, authorization devices);
• system software (operating systems (OS), information security tools, device drivers);
• standard application software (spreadsheet processing tools, word processing tools, by email, files);
• network services (DNS servers, packet protection, authorization, Internet access and application servers - database management systems (DBMS), postal services);
• technical support services, dispatch and quality control center.

Organizational and administrative components:

• instructions for setting up server and client software, work regulations;
• rules for dividing the network into areas in accordance with security and performance needs;
• special software aimed at supporting certain business processes (design, warehouse accounting, accounting, interaction with suppliers, production management).

Information infrastructure at various levels (global, national, industry, organizations, etc.) contains:

• distributed information resources, including web resources (sites, portals, etc.), banks and databases (including with remote access), digital libraries, electronic magazines;
• distributed computing resources, including shared computing centers, supercomputer centers, network computing resources of organizations, individual computers;
• telecommunication resources that ensure interaction of remote users with information and computing resources.

Types of IT infrastructure

Today in Russia there are practically no companies left that do not use information technology, and the problem of most of them at present is no longer the lack of automation of certain processes as such, but the consequences of spontaneous automation carried out without long-term plans and without an idea of ​​​​the prospects for its development . Spontaneous purchase computer technology and software, ordering and implementing business applications that cannot be updated from small companies that no longer exist, the presence of different applications for solving the same problem implemented in different departments, problems of administering and protecting heterogeneous segmented networks - this is far from complete a list of problems that heads of IT departments of various companies have to face today.

IT environment of a company with similar problems, is quite difficult to manage, even though the capabilities of modern software administration tools are now much broader than the tools available to the IT department ten years ago. Tasks such as supporting different versions of operating systems and business applications, limiting access to resources and data as the number of users grows, managing server performance with increasing load, timely installation of critical updates in large companies with heterogeneous networks and spontaneously formed IT infrastructure are impossible call them simple. According to consulting firm Accenture, IT professionals spend up to 70% of their time maintaining existing systems, including managing accounts and passwords across disparate information systems, solving technical problems users and manual installation of updates. It is not surprising that they simply have no time to think about development prospects and develop a strategic vision for the development of their division.

It follows from this that many modern companies need not so much automation of their activities as automation of management of the company’s IT environment. According to a survey conducted by Microsoft of 400 companies around the world, more than half of the day-to-day IT management activities are performed manually without the use of automation tools. As a result, over a five-year IT system operation cycle, over 60% total value its ownership will have to pay for the costs of maintaining full-time administrators.

Requirements for IT infrastructure management tools

Below we will look at exactly what requirements should be placed on IT infrastructure management tools.

Automate the installation of operating systems, applications and updates

If you have a huge computer park and a heterogeneous IT environment, it is much more profitable to install new operating systems and standard applications in automatic mode. The speed of mass deployment of basic software products is one of the tools for minimizing disruptions in business processes and reducing the costs of maintaining IT infrastructure.

Automated execution of repetitive routine operations (for example, by recording scripts) greatly simplifies network administration. Therefore, modern IT infrastructure management tools should allow such actions.

In a rapidly developing business environment, business applications used to automate business processes are also changing rapidly. At the same time, there is a need to automate the process of regular installation of specialized software while optimizing the cost of it, which requires automated software distribution tools integrated with user account management tools.

A significant portion of modern malware exploits vulnerabilities in the operating system, browsers, email clients, and business applications, and the vast majority of attacks on corporate networks become possible due to untimely installation of updates for these application categories. Under these conditions, installing critical updates to operating systems and business applications within a heterogeneous distributed network is a very difficult task, requiring a large amount of resources. Therefore, tools for automatic distribution of software updates (preferably with the ability to rollback) should also be present in the arsenal of the IT service.

Automated event processing and statistics collection

Automated processing of network events involves tracking problems in managed computers and devices, automatically identifying and eliminating their causes, correcting the consequences of failures, and often preventing them by performing diagnostic operations and appropriate preventive measures, collecting and analyzing statistics on the intensity of use and frequency of network errors. devices.

Inventory of software products throughout life cycle and checking them for compliance with the licensing policy is an important task - it allows companies, on the one hand, to avoid spending on unnecessary licenses, and on the other hand, to eliminate legal risks in the event of a discrepancy between the number of purchased licenses and actually used copies of products. Therefore, maintaining detailed records of applications installed on the network, collecting statistics on their use in order to identify rarely used applications, and searching for outdated versions of installed software become urgent tasks when managing IT infrastructure.

Performance and Availability Management

Performance management involves managing the configuration of computers and network devices, turning them on and off depending on a given schedule or in case of technical need (for example, turning on additional devices when a certain load level is reached). This category also includes control over the use of resources, in particular managing the consumption of network resources by applications or users (for example, regulating quotas for the use of memory, processor time, disk space), as well as controlling access to network resources based on the selected security policy.

Application Management Architecture

The architecture of application management tools is approximately the same. Typically, such a tool contains a server part and a management console accessible to the network administrator. So-called agents are installed on all managed computers or other devices - applications or services that execute commands received from the server part, and also collect information about the computer, the applications running on it and the events that occur with them.

Some application management tools can perform a variety of actions based on the data they collect, such as running tests, stopping or reconfiguring managed applications, and issuing diagnostic messages.

IT infrastructure management tools from leading manufacturers

According to IDC (see for example: Grieser T., Worldwide Distributed Performance and Availability Management Software 2005 - 2009 Forecast Summary and 2004 Vendor Shares. IDC MARKET ANALYSIS. 2005. July. IDC #33752. Vol. 1), the application management market leaders in the automated event processing tools category are Hewlett-Packard, Computer Associates and IBM (with NEC Corportion having the highest market share growth), and in the performance and availability management tools category - Hewlett -Packard, BMC Software and IBM (Microsoft Corporation had the highest growth in market share). Below we will look at the families of IT infrastructure management tools of some of the listed companies.

BMC Software

BMC Software is a world-renowned developer and supplier of network administration tools, applications, databases, ERP and CRM systems that improve the availability, performance and recoverability of critical business applications and data. BMC products are available for a wide range of platforms, including various implementations and versions of UNIX, Windows, OS/2, OS/390, OpenVMS and NetWare. Among the characteristic features of BMC products, first of all, it should be noted the focus on supporting user service level agreements (Service Level Agreement, SLA) and the construction of a functioning model aimed at implementing such an agreement, as well as their high performance(Fig. 1). The company offers the following product families for IT infrastructure management:

• BMC Application Management- the tool is designed to manage the performance and availability of business applications (including applications from Oracle and SAP) and server products (such as Microsoft Exchange and J2EE servers BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, etc.);
• BMC Database Management- a tool for administration, performance management and recovery of databases managed by DBMS from leading manufacturers - Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Sybase;
• BMC Infrastructure Management- a tool for managing server and mainframe operating systems, data storage, networks, hardware, middleware, and optimizing the performance of these categories of software;
• BMC Operations Management- a tool for performing routine operations on a schedule and for compiling reports on network events;
• BMC Remedy Service Management- a tool for searching, detecting, modeling application failures and responding to them;
• BMC Security Management- a tool for managing user access rights to applications and corporate resources.

BMC application data can be stored in the BMC Atrium CMDB (Configuration Management Database), which provides convenient data visualization tools.

Note that BMC products include a documented application programming interface that allows you to create based on them own solutions and integrate BMC tools with other applications.

Rice. 1. IT infrastructure management areas covered by BMC products

Computer Associates

Computer Associates' (CA) Unicenter family of IT infrastructure management products can be adapted to fit virtually any computing environment.

This family includes the following products:

• Unicenter Asset Management- a tool for automating the management of enterprise IT assets, with the help of which comprehensive accounting and control of IT resources is carried out. Unicenter Asset Management functionality helps improve quality management decisions associated with enterprise IT assets and reducing associated risks. Unicenter Asset Management provides monitoring of application usage on servers, personal computers and other client devices. In addition, this product allows you to automate IT asset management processes, including accounting and inventory of software and hardware running on the enterprise network, maintenance of various components of the IT infrastructure, license administration and reporting in heterogeneous environments (Fig. 2);

Rice. 2. Areas of Integrated IT Infrastructure Management Covered by Computer Associates Products

• Unicenter Software Delivery- provides automation of software deployment and updating processes on desktop, mobile and pocket computers, as well as on servers in heterogeneous network environments, including application delivery, distribution of patches and updates, system configuration management and rollback of installations on various software and hardware platforms. This product creates conditions for increasing the efficiency of IT services and reducing costs for information support business through the automation of IT processes and the introduction of application catalogs with advanced self-service capabilities. One of the key advantages of Unicenter Software Delivery is high degree automation of software installation and maintenance processes and flexible and detailed management of application delivery permissions;
• Unicenter Remote Control is a reliable and secure corporate system for remote management of Windows computers. The list of remote control tasks includes maintenance remote services such as network applications, server administration, and remote control of end-user computers (for example, when providing technical support). This system is one of the industry's best solutions in its class and provides centralized system maintenance, policy-based management, access control, session auditing and advanced administration capabilities. Unicenter Remote Control fully meets the needs of large enterprises in terms of remote control and allows the operator to simultaneously perform several tasks at once: copy files to remote computer, communicate with the user, launch applications, observe and record user actions, and manage settings and security settings. Note that when developing Unicenter Remote Control Special attention attention was paid to reducing the time required to implement and master the system.

Hewlett-Packard

HP OpenView is a set of software products aimed at managing corporate information technologies of any scale - from small systems based on Windows servers to large distributed systems based on various versions of UNIX, Linux and Windows, containing several thousand computers. This complex includes tools for managing networks, operating systems, applications, as well as their performance, data copying and storage, and services.

Briefcase software solutions HP OpenView consists of several product families (Figure 3), including tools for managing servers and applications, storage, networks, Internet technologies and telecommunications equipment (there is a range of HP OpenView products designed specifically for telecommunications companies, and today HP is the most a well-known supplier of telecommunications equipment management tools). Separately, we note the presence of IT service management tools in the HP solution portfolio.

Rice. 3. Portfolio of HP OpenView software solutions for IT departments

Server and application management tools should include, first of all, HP OpenView Operations for Windows And HP OpenView Operations for Unix. These products are designed to monitor and manage application performance, as well as control network and application events. HP OpenView Operations for Windows integrates with network infrastructure management tools HP OpenView Network Node Manager, which allows you to automatically search for new servers added to the network, and then automatically deploy the required components and policies based on the service search results.

To manage application performance, this family includes tools HP OpenView Performance Manager And Performance Agents, allowing, using a single interface, centralized monitoring, analysis and forecasting of resource use in distributed and heterogeneous environments, as well as HP OpenView Performance Insight, helping to monitor events on the network and applications and analyze them. Solutions HP OpenVew Report Packs And HP OpenView Reporter are designed to create reports on the operation of an enterprise's distributed IT infrastructure based on data received from HP OpenView applications.

To manage identity and access to IT resources, the HP OpenView family includes products HP OpenView Select Identity, HP OpenView Select Access, and HP OpenView Select Federation, and to manage backup and recovery of server DBMS data - HP OpenView Storage Data Protector. The last of these products is an enterprise-grade data protection and system recovery solution in emergency situations, implementing instant recovery technology, as well as alternative disaster recovery options to eliminate unplanned downtime, allowing you to restore the functionality of the information system in a few minutes.

We also note the presence in this family of products designed to interact with end users in order to improve the quality of their service - HP OpenView Service Desk, as well as business process monitoring tools HP OpenView Business Process Insight and controls for service-oriented architecture - HP OpenView Service Oriented Architecture Manager.

To manage Internet services, this product family provides a solution HP OpenView Internet Services, allowing external probing of application services, Internet services and protocols by modeling user requests for directories, mail services, web services, remote access services (including dial-up and wireless access).

IBM

The IBM Tivoli family of products, designed to manage enterprise applications of varying sizes, is based on a set of core components that build a solution for a specific enterprise. Home distinctive feature This family of products is the so-called proactive management of IT infrastructure, capable of identifying and eliminating faults before they occur. Tivoli family products are available for AIX, HP-UX, Sun Solaris, Windows, Novell NetWare, OS/2, AS/400, Linux, z/OS, OS/390 platforms. Note that recently IBM has recommended implementing Tivoli family products in order to follow the ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library) library techniques, shifting the emphasis in the positioning of its products from managing IT resources and systems to managing IT services (Fig. 4).

Rice. 4. Some of the Tivoli software products that support the ITIL service management process

The Tivoli family of products includes configuration management and operational support solutions:

• IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager- allows you to manage the installation and update of software, including on pocket computers;
• IBM Tivoli License Manager-intended for software inventory;
• IBM Tivoli Remote Control- allows you to set policies for managing enterprise IT resources and remotely administer desktop systems;
• IBM Tivoli Workload Scheduler- makes it possible to automate workloads.

In addition to configuration management tools, the Tivoli family of products includes performance and availability management solutions:

• IBM Tivoli Monitoring- to implement distributed monitoring of various systems, automatically detect and resolve problems and analyze trends;
• IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Databases(DBMS manufactured by IBM, Oracle and Microsoft are supported) and Tivoli Manager for Sybase- For centralized management servers and databases;
• IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Web Infrastructure- to manage web servers and application servers;
• IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Applications- to manage SAP business applications;
• IBM Tivoli Analyzer for Lotus Domino 6.0 And IBM Tivoli Monitoring for Transaction Performance- to detect performance problems in systems based on server products from IBM itself;
• IBM Tivoli Web Site Analyzer- to analyze visitor traffic, page traffic statistics, and the integrity of the website’s content;
• IBM Tivoli Service Level Advisor- to provide proactive management and failure prediction through quantitative performance analysis;
• IBM Tivoli NetView- for network management;
• IBM Tivoli Switch Analyzer- to detect and populate all network level switches;
• IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console- for multi-level search for causes of faults and event analysis.

In addition, there are a number of solutions for automated control distribution of IT resources and peak loads.

The Tivoli family also includes security products:

• IBM Directory Server- to synchronize security data across all applications used;
• IBM Directory Integrator- for the integration of identification parameters contained in catalogs, databases, systems teamwork and business applications;
• IBM Tivoli Identity Manager And IBM Tivoli Access Manager for Operating Systems- to control access to applications and operating systems;
• IBM Tivoli Risk Manager- for centralized management of network security.

In addition, the Tivoli family includes a wide range of backup and storage management products.

Microsoft

Although today Microsoft is not the market leader in IT infrastructure management tools, application management tools produced by this company are used quite widely in our country.

The main purpose of Microsoft tools Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM), as well as administration tools available to users of the latest versions of Microsoft server operating systems (such as Automated Deployment Services, Remote Installation Services, Microsoft Group Policy Management Console, Microsoft Windows Update Services), - software management, automatic installation of Microsoft operating systems and applications designed for them, automatic delivery of updates, access management and user rights (Fig. 5).

Rice. 5. Information systems management using Microsoft Operations Manager and Microsoft Systems Management Server

Microsoft Systems Management Server is designed to ensure automatic distribution and accounting of software in large distributed systems based on Microsoft operating systems, including planning with the determination of hardware and software in local network, verification, analysis, implementation of business applications for various target user groups, installation of applications on newly created workplaces in accordance with user rights. This product allows you to carry out targeted installation of various software for different groups of users, as well as solve problems related to software inventory and control over the use of software and hardware resources by collecting information about software products and equipment installed on the network and their use.

Microsoft Operations Manager is designed to identify and troubleshoot network, hardware, and application problems by directly monitoring ongoing events, as well as the status and performance of network resources, and issuing warnings about potential problems (Figure 6).

Rice. 6. Monitoring server health using Microsoft Operations Manager

The product is intended for managing the IT infrastructure of small companies or specialized groups of servers (up to 10 pcs.) Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 Workgroup Edition. It allows you to identify potential threats in the functioning of your software and, thanks to built-in analysis tools, prevent them from developing into serious problems, increase the efficiency of IT operations, simplify support for heterogeneous platforms and applications, and also create custom service packs.

In addition, there are separate solutions for performance management and event analysis for IT infrastructure components based on Microsoft server products, such as Active Directory Management Pack- to monitor the status of the Active Directory directory service, Exchange Management Pack- for managing messaging services and Exchange data stores, as well as a number of other products. To ensure interaction with IT infrastructure management tools produced by other companies, a product is available MOM Connector Framework, allowing bidirectional broadcasting of warnings and data synchronization using web services.

Instead of a conclusion

The introduction of such tools is a fairly expensive investment. However, with a balanced approach to deciding which products to implement and which processes to automate, such a decision can be cost-effective, since it will free up IT specialists who are busy maintaining multiple servers and workstations and routine operations such as installing the same type of updates, and also reduce costs associated with downtime of equipment and applications.