Applying web service compositions in systems management

Abstract

Systems management in any organization depends exclusively on the efforts of a system administrator. Every change in the IT infrastructure landscape requires changes in the systems configuration settings. We propose the use of enterprise registries for addressing the automation of systems configuration. Registries provide global view on the whole IT infrastructure of an enterprise, store a complete configuration data and maintain consistent record of systems state. The role of a registry in the automation of reconfiguration activities in an enterprise can either be passive - with the registry being only a data store for configuration data, or an active one. We view the active approach much more suitable for facilitating automatic system management. Active registries serve not only for data keeping but also command and perform reconfiguration directly onto the enterprise systems. To facilitate the seamless interaction between registry and all systems we propose to extend them with Web service capabilities. To define and perform all the complex sequences of tasks according to the configuration rules defined in a registry we advocate the use of Web Service compositions. We call these process-based Web services “systems management rules”. Furthermore, the development of systems management rules can be automated by using Web Service Flows templates.