Summary

In this chapter, we covered the challenges at different levels of IT operation in managing the intricacies involved in today's data centers. The evolution of the data centers from monolithic servers to large scale distributed deployments has brought about significant complexity in the IT backbone. Modeling this complex topology and the inherent interactions with a business service-based focus is one of the precursors to effectively manage the IT infrastructure. Reduction in complexity of management will be enabled by a hierarchy of models namely target, system, and services.

Modeling components into a target enables the administrator to perform regular monitoring and maintenance tasks easily. Creation of group targets, based on related and homogeneous targets, as well as modeling related components into a system, brings in the required business outlook in viewing the IT infrastructure. Modeling the business functions as services brings in the end user dimension while managing the data centers. Service modeling also helps in determining the service-levels based on availability and performance as perceived by the service consumers. This end user-based focus towards IT management is a must for continuous improvement in IT operations. Such an improvement is a key to transforming IT, to scale up to meet the business challenges in any organization. To wrap up, this chapter also gave an introduction to the industry standards such as ITIL in business service modeling and governance. To put it in a nutshell, we saw that BSM requires the right mix of modeling and mindset.

The next chapter will introduce Oracle Enterprise Manager (OEM) 11g. OEM is a product offering from Oracle that provides solutions to the typical infrastructure management problems as described in this chapter. This chapter will introduce the key terminologies and concepts used within OEM. Understanding them will be essential for effective deployment of OEM for managing business services.