Systems management refers to enterprise-wide

administration Administration may refer to: Management of organizations * Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal ** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, administ ...

of distributed systems including (and commonly in practice)

computer system A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...

s. Systems management is strongly influenced by network management initiatives in

telecommunication Telecommunication is the transmission of information by various types of technologies over wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. It has its origin in the desire of humans for communication over a distance greater than tha ...

s. The application performance management (APM) technologies are now a subset of Systems management. Maximum productivity can be achieved more efficiently through event correlation, system automation and predictive analysis which is now all part of APM. Centralized management has a time and effort trade-off that is related to the size of the company, the expertise of the IT staff, and the amount of technology being used: * For a small business startup with ten computers, automated centralized processes may take more time to learn how to use and implement than just doing the management work manually on each computer. * A very large business with thousands of similar employee computers may clearly be able to save time and money, by having IT staff learn to do systems management automation. * A small branch office of a large corporation may have access to a central IT staff, with the experience to set up automated management of the systems in the branch office, without need for local staff in the branch office to do the work. Systems management may involve one or more of the following tasks: * Hardware inventories. * Server availability monitoring and metrics. * Software inventory and installation. * Anti-virus and anti-malware. * User's activities monitoring. * Capacity monitoring. * Security management. * Storage management. * Network capacity and utilization monitoring. * Anti-manipulation management

Functions

Functional groups are provided according to

International Telecommunication Union The International Telecommunication Union is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established on 17 May 1865 as the International Telegraph Unio ...

Telecommunication Standardization Sector The ITU Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) is one of the three sectors (divisions or units) of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). It is responsible for coordinating standards for telecommunications and Information Commu ...

(ITU-T) Common management information protocol (X.700) standard. This framework is also known as

Fault, Configuration, Accounting, Performance, Security FCAPS is the ISO Telecommunications Management Network model and framework for network management. ''FCAPS'' is an acronym for fault, configuration, accounting, performance, security, the management categories into which the ISO model defines ne ...

(FCAPS). ;

Fault management In network management, fault management is the set of functions that detect, isolate, and correct malfunctions in a telecommunications network, compensate for environmental changes, and include maintaining and examining error logs, accepting and ...

Troubleshooting Troubleshooting is a form of problem solving, often applied to repair failed products or processes on a machine or a system. It is a logical, systematic search for the source of a problem in order to solve it, and make the product or process ope ...

, error logging and data recovery ; Configuration management ; Hardware and software inventory ::* ''As we begin the process of automating the management of our technology, what equipment and resources do we have already?'' ::* ''How can this inventorying information be gathered and updated automatically, without direct hands-on examination of each device, and without hand-documenting with a pen and notepad?'' ::* ''What do we need to upgrade or repair?'' ::* ''What can we consolidate to reduce complexity or reduce energy use?'' ::* ''What resources would be better reused somewhere else?'' ::* ''What commercial software are we using that is improperly licensed, and either needs to be removed or more licenses purchased?'' :*

Provisioning In telecommunication, provisioning involves the process of preparing and equipping a network to allow it to provide new services to its users. In National Security/Emergency Preparedness telecommunications services, ''"provisioning"'' equates to ...

::* ''What software will we need to use in the future?'' ::* ''What training will need to be provided to use the software effectively?'' :*

Software deployment Software deployment is all of the activities that make a software system available for use. The general deployment process consists of several interrelated activities with possible transitions between them. These activities can occur on the p ...

::* ''What steps are necessary to install it on perhaps hundreds or thousands of computers?'' :* Package management ::* ''How do we maintain and update the software we are using, possibly through automated update mechanisms?'' ; Accounting management :* Billing and statistics gathering ;

Performance management Performance management (PM) is the process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organization's goals in an effective and efficient manner. Performance management can focus on the performance of a whole organization, a d ...

:* Software metering :* ''Who is using the software and how often?'' ::* ''If the license says only so many copies may be in use at any one time but may be installed in many more places than licensed, then track usage of those licenses.'' ::* ''If the licensed user limit is reached, either prevent more people from using it, or allow overflow and notify accounting that more licenses need to be purchased.'' :* Event and metric monitoring ::* ''How reliable are the computers and software?'' ::* ''What errors or software bugs are preventing staff from doing their job?'' ::* ''What trends are we seeing for hardware failure and life expectancy?'' ;

Security management Security management is the identification of an organization's assets (including people, buildings, machines, systems and information assets), followed by the development, documentation, and implementation of policies and procedures for protec ...

:* Identity management :* Policy management However this standard should not be treated as comprehensive, there are obvious omissions. Some are recently emerging sectors, some are implied and some are just not listed. The primary ones are: * Business Impact functions (also known as Business Systems Management) * Capacity management * Real-time Application Relationship Discovery (which supports Configuration Management) *

Security Information and Event Management Security information and event management (SIEM) is a field within the field of computer security, where software products and services combine security information management (SIM) and security event management (SEM). They provide real-time a ...

functions (SIEM) * Workload scheduling

functions can also be split into end-to-end performance measuring and infrastructure component measuring functions. Another recently emerging sector is operational intelligence (OI) which focuses on real-time monitoring of business events that relate to business processes, not unlike

business activity monitoring Business activity monitoring (BAM) is software that aids the monitoring of business activities which are implemented in computer systems. The term was originally coined by analysts at Gartner, Inc. and refers to the aggregation, analysis, and ...

(BAM).

Standards

;

Distributed Management Task Force Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) is a 501(c)(6) nonprofit industry standards organization that creates open manageability standards spanning diverse emerging and traditional IT infrastructures including cloud, virtualization, network, s ...

(DMTF) : Alert Standard Format (ASF) : Common Information Model (CIM) : Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DASH) : Systems Management Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) : Java Management Extensions (JMX)

Academic preparation

Schools that offer or have offered degrees in the field of systems management include the

University of Southern California , mottoeng = "Let whoever earns the palm bear it" , religious_affiliation = Nonsectarian—historically Methodist , established = , accreditation = WSCUC , type = Private research university , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $8. ...

, the

University of Denver The University of Denver (DU) is a private research university in Denver, Colorado. Founded in 1864, it is the oldest independent private university in the Rocky Mountain Region of the United States. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Univ ...

, Capitol Technology University, and

Florida Institute of Technology The Florida Institute of Technology (Florida Tech or FIT) is a private research university in Melbourne, Florida. The university comprises four academic colleges: Engineering & Science, Aeronautics, Psychology & Liberal Arts, and Business. A ...

References

Bibliography

External links