Another take on JIRO chances....This is good background for us in advance of Douglas N's JIRO musings.
Sun's Jiro technology automates, integrates distributed management applications
New technology first implementation of FMA specification
Summary
Until now, the absence of an industry-wide standard for developing network-based management applications meant that no single solution could encompass all the devices of a heterogeneous, distributed corporate network. Sun Microsystems' announcement last week of the Jiro technology developer's release was meant to change all that. (1,100 words)
By Joe Franklin
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iro is the first implementation of the newly released Federated Management Architecture (FMA) specification, a Java-based component architecture and management service for automated network management.
By using a common set of Java APIs for multivendor device and application interoperability, the Jiro technology developer's release implements a standard for communication between applications, services, and devices across heterogeneous networks. This standard will make it far easier for developers to simultaneously deliver solutions and reduce the complexity and cost of managing networks. Solutions that take manual tasks out of a process can be written on top of Jiro technology.
For example, developers can use Jiro to create management applications that solve the typical customer problems of monitoring, configuring, diagnosing, and troubleshooting network devices, storage, systems, and applications in an automated fashion. And by defining both basic and dynamic management services, Jiro provides the basis for open and intelligent network-centered solutions.
"Software suppliers have to be able to get their new revisions and updates in place very quickly and across multiple platforms," said Dave Hill, an industry analyst with the Aberdeen Group. "Jiro saves that time, which benefits the end users, because they can implement the new technology much faster. Basically it's a help to everybody and it also provides the foundation, or common denominator, that everybody needs."
Whether or not Sun will be able to popularize Jiro, however, remains the important question. The new technology must receive a lot of acceptance from such major nonproprietary players in the marketplace as IBM and Hewlett-Packard. However, the continuing success of Java and the growing popularity of Jini have many believing that success is more likely than not.
"Sun is building on Java with both Jini and now Jiro," said Hill. "It gets back to [the idea that] the network is not only the computer, but also the storage. To be able to plug and play easily is an important part of the process. Customers want to reduce the complexity of managing their storage environment, and Jiro will do that. In addition, the FMA is a good start to the overall process."
The FMA specification was designed to fill a need, representing a standard in an area where there had not traditionally been one. By using common programming interfaces to define such basic management services as events, logging, lookup, scheduling, and transactions, the FMA spec creates a model in which management services can interact freely anywhere on a network.
"The FMA specification sets the stage for advanced management of distributed network devices and applications," said Denise Shiffman, vice president of marketing for Sun's network storage division. "Applying this technology to the complex world of storage networks will enable quick development of interoperable management solutions that allow customers to easily manage heterogeneous networks."
Jiro technology will provide an environment for developing management software that can be deployed in diverse, distributed networks, regardless of underlying operating systems or hardware. Jiro's component-based nature enables developers to incorporate standard management services into their applications, which will allow them to focus the bulk of their development efforts on adding functionality instead of building basic infrastructure.
For IT managers and their staffs, Jiro technology helps simplify storage network management and reduce costs. The intelligent connectivity inherent in Jiro fosters a greater level of automation throughout the storage network. Tasks that normally require manual intervention, such as the monitoring of available disk space, can be handled easily and transparently. Moreover, management applications enabled with Jiro technology can help predict and prevent events which might otherwise interfere with data availability and productive operations.
How it works
Jiro technology provides a standard, industry-defined middle layer of components and services that facilitate connectivity between managed resources and management applications. These resources can be anywhere on the corporate network, connected with any combination of routers and hubs; the resources can make use of any standard management protocol, such as the Web Based Enterprise Management Protocol or Simple Network Management Protocol. The complete Jiro technology architecture will also include support for other industry-standard APIs and protocols, and extensions for additional security and for functionality specific to storage networks.
Figure 1. Jiro technology architecture
Jiro supplies such basic management functions as fault notification, scheduling, distributed logging, and transaction rollback. In addition, the technology provides intelligent network connectivity, such as enterprise-wide discovery and lookup, which enables devices to transparently connect to the network and identify themselves as available resources to other devices and management tools. The collective group of devices can act as a single logical unit for management applications.
For example, imagine an international corporation running mission-critical applications on a network, with several terabytes of data distributed over dozens of servers and storage arrays. During a peak sales period, the order processing database exceeds its allotted disk space, and a new storage array must be brought online immediately. Failure to respond to this situation could result in slower transaction times, or, even worse, lost data and lost opportunities for more sales.
To remedy this situation, the company would want to deploy intelligent management solutions that incorporate FederatedBeans components to enable dynamic monitoring and administration of the storage network. In this instance, a filesystem monitoring bean would collect filesystem statistics, evaluate usage trends, and predict future capacity requirements. When the monitoring bean predicts that a filesystem will run out of space, it will request an additional disk from a pool of disks kept for this purpose. It will then dynamically add this disk to the volume underlying the filesystem, increasing the system's available space. With these intelligent management solutions, you avoid the data unavailability and lost productivity that might occur if it were necessary to deal with such problems manually.
About the author
Joe Franklin is an editor at SunWorld.
No wonder it took awhile.... |
