Open Management Consortium Blog

The Era of Open Source Systems Management

whurley — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 14:00:30 GMT

By Greg Wallace, Emu Software

Nature fascinates me. In particular, I think it is amazing how some would-be competitors actually come to rely on each other. Take the example of the sea anemone and the clown fish. Anemones usually eat fish, and fish usually eat plants. However, in the case of the clown fish and certain anemones, they’ve found that they are better off working together. The clown fish gets extra protection by burying itself in the anemone’s tentacles and the anemone gobbles up the clown fish’s crumbs. Good deal.

In nature, it takes time for such relationships to form – on the order of a few million years. Fortunately, we humans can apply lessons learned from nature and elsewhere to our own circumstances in far less time. Thus, when it comes to information technology, millions of humanoids, even those whose paychecks come from would-be competitors like HP and IBM, have recognized the benefit of working together on such projects as operating systems, databases, web servers, name servers, developer tools, CRM systems, and many many more open source projects.

The Open Management Consortium, or OMC, is evidence that the forces propelling Linux to it’s status as the fastest growing server platform are present and accounted for when it comes to systems management. At a macro level, systems management software has a lot in common with operating systems, with web servers, and with databases. Some of the key things these software categories have in common are:

lots of users
a horizontal nature
a high incidence of user desire to customize
an initial market dominated by large incumbent vendors with integrated, proprietary products
Observing these facts, the founding members of OMC are leveraging the open source model to develop exquisite projects that deliver world-class, standards-based * systems management capabilities. And users have voted with their mice by downloading Nagios, Webmin, OpenQRM, NetDirector, Zenoss, OpenSIMs and many other open source management tools. As importantly, community members are developing extensions, plugins, fixes and modules around these projects, making them richer, more useful and more robust.

To this end, OMC seeks the active participation from heretofore proprietary systems management vendors like BMC, CA, NetIQ and Quest, as well as from their partners and resellers. These companies know systems management and, if like the clown fish and the sea anemone come to see the upside to working together, would make significant contributions to the next phase of maturity in the systems management marketplace.

OMC Should Drive a New Systems Management Taxonomy

whurley — Thu, 08 Jun 2006 14:00:12 GMT

By Greg Wallace, Emu Software

Taxonomy: (from Greek taxis meaning arrangement or division and nomos meaning law) is the science of classification according to a pre-determined system, with the resulting catalog used to provide a conceptual framework for discussion, analysis, or information retrieval. In theory, the development of a good taxonomy takes into account the importance of separating elements of a group (taxon) into subgroups (taxa) that are mutually exclusive, unambiguous, and taken together, include all possibilities. In practice, a good taxonomy should be simple, easy to remember, and easy to use.

Why do I think a new taxonomy is needed for systems management? Type “systems management” (with parens) into Google and you get more than 58 million pages to sift through, with multiple pages of sponsored links from such companies/products as Sybase, OpManager, ConfigureSoft, MySQL, BMC, Perle, groundworkopensource, heroix, handysoft, Raritan and a slew of aggregation sites offering to help you make sense of all the different solutions. And though less numerous, the search results are no less varied when one uses any number of other more specific terms, like Configuration Management or Provisioning.

People in the industry know that the varied solutions offered by the above-listed companies perform different functions, that they do them in different ways, they act on different aspects of IT (devices, applications, etc), they are variously broad or narrow in scope and are designed to appeal to different audiences. Sure, all of them can be accurately described as Systems Management, but to someone trying to find a solution to a specific problem, this is about as useful as if I were to challenge you to name the living creature I’m thinking of and only give you the clue that it is a member of the kingdom animalia.

So, the sheer diversity of the search results and sponsored links highlights, I think, the need for a tighter framework to describe systems management functions and benefits so that users and solution providers (VARs, SIs, etc) can more easily identify the right solution to their and their customer’s needs. Let me say up front that I am clearly not the first person who has recognized the need for a more precise and standardized way of describing different types of systems management products (see, for example this Network world article). But I do think that the birth of OMC provides a new and great opportunity to actually achieve this objective. Why do I think this? Because I believe that one of the fundamental tenets of open source is transparency. As the only industry body explicitly focused on promoting open source systems management, one way the OMC can do this is by driving transparency around the way various types of systems management products are described.

If we think about why this problem is so bad, perhaps it comes down to the closed nature of traditional systems management solutions, and the effect this closed nature has on marketing habits. Like other proprietary IT solutions, traditional systems management solutions compete, in part, on comprehensiveness. The more the products do, and the more products offered (products that are frequently integrated together in some closed way) the more can be sold to installed base customers, and the less likely these customers will be to turn to another vendor. This is one mechanism of lock-in, and just as it is present in the operating system market, though less so now than say 5 years ago, so too is it present in systems management. And so it is understandable why proprietary systems management solutions may have a bias towards general, if accurate, descriptions – call it “fly in the web” marketing – the broader the web, the more flies one catches.

With open source projects, in contrast, our stuff can be downloaded and used by anyone and everyone, and so we must assume, regardless of the ambiguity of the terms we use to describe them, that the true nature of our product’s functionality, architecture, scope and benefits will become known in great detail, and rather quickly. Another salient difference is that we in the commercial open source community typically price on a subscription basis, which means that each year or two, our customers can vote to keep us, or kick us off their island, so we had better deliver what we promise. For these reasons, I would argue that OMC members ought to have a strong bias to be unambiguous in the description of our projects, using terms that place them in mutually exclusive sub-categories of the broader Systems Management main category. At the end of the day, it may well be, in fact it probably will be, the case that some projects are broader than others, but until we come up with a standard way of classifying systems management solutions, we have no transparent way to measure and express a product’s scope.

Step 1:

For starters, I’d love to get general agreement that the OMC will strive to set some standards for how member projects describe themselves. I, for one, like the way Webmin does it:

Webmin consists of a simple web server, and a number of CGI programs which directly update system files like /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/passwd. The web server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and use no non-standard Perl modules.

This description has almost all the essential ingredients (missing, perhaps, is a quick statement of benefits). In these three sentences, it clearly states what Webmin is (a Web-based interface for system administration of Unix), what it does (you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and so on. ), what it’s scope is (system administration for Unix), and how it works (Webmin consists of a simple web server, and a number of CGI programs which directly update system files like /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/passwd. The web server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and use no non-standard Perl modules.) I think this is a good formula, and could serve as a starting point for discussion around how OMC member projects can facilitate efficient “information retrieval” about our projects by standardizing the kind of information we provide in our project descriptions.

Step 2:

As with so much in life, any new systems management taxonomy would only be beneficial to the extent that people actually use it. And so I’d like to get a read from the other members of the OMC, and from visitors that may not yet be participants (you can join by going to: http://open-management.com/join/) as to whether they: A) agree that such a taxonomy is needed and, B) will commit to using it to describe their projects, assuming that we establish in advance the rules for discussing and deciding what the taxonomy would be. Only if a critical mass agrees that this is a problem and commits to using whatever we come up with do I think it makes sense to embark on discussing what this new taxonomy should look like.

From here, we can pursue more ambitious goals like agreeing on specific terms to describe certain capabilities and what the axes on which we measure projects’ capabilities should be. In the absence of such agreement and standardization, each of us will come up with our own way to describe our project’s functionality, scope, architecture and benefits, running the risk of using the same term to describe different things and different terms to describe the same thing. This serves no one’s interests, least of all the customer / user, and the solution provider that wants to find the best product or products to solve their customer’s specific problem(s). I hope others will agree that the OMC gives us an opportunity to achieve something that many smart people have recognized a need for but that, to date, nobody has really figured out how to accomplish.

Open Source Vendors and Projects Unite to Form Open Management Consortium

whurley — Tue, 09 May 2006 13:59:57 GMT

Qlusters and Emu Software Lead Industry’s First Open Source Management Consortium

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.— May 9, 2006— Leading open source systems and network management vendors Qlusters and Emu Software today announced the industry’s first Open Management Consortium (OMC). The Consortium will promote the benefits offered by open source and open standard technologies and will provide a forum for product development collaboration among open source IT management projects. The founding members of the OMC include Nagios (sponsored by Ayamon), NetDirector (sponsored by Emu Software), openQRM (sponsored by Qlusters), openSIMS (sponsored by Symbiot), the Webmin project and the Zenoss project (sponsored by Zenoss, Inc.).

“The Consortium is an innovative approach that will allow multiple open source providers to collaborate on systems management initiatives for servers running open source software stacks,” said Jean Bozman, an IDC analyst based in San Mateo, CA. “Small companies do not have the reach or the resources to provide a broad-based systems management solution, or framework, without collaboration. This Consortium provides a mechanism to aggregate open source systems management solutions–and to fit these management solutions together to address customers’ operational costs.”

The Consortium is comprised of leading open source projects that are developing and shaping the technologies used to manage IT infrastructure, particularly open source infrastructure such as that hosted on Linux. The initial committee members represent community leaders and firms that are central to open management technologies. Specific objectives of the Open Management Consortium include:

Create awareness of open source management tools in the market
Provide education and resources to help end users make informed decisions regarding open source
Establish conventions and standards that enable integration and interoperability
Enable collaboration and coordination on common development projects
Promote collaborative open source systems management solutions

The Consortium will work to drive open standards for systems management within the industry, assisting IT managers and system administrators to custom-create solutions to best serve their business needs. One of the first projects will involve developing protocols for managing common IT infrastructure components, including information about servers, storage devices, configurations, networks models, middleware, applications and other relevant data, to create a unified approach to systems management for open source vendors and projects. The Consortium’s agenda also includes designing several integration paths for exchanging data with proprietary systems.

“By uniting these projects, we are providing IT managers with an alternative choice to the monolithic approach traditionally found in systems management,” said William Hurley, chief technology officer at Qlusters. “The Open Management Consortium will spearhead the movement to open source open standards, leveling the playing field in systems management and providing equal opportunity for all to participate.”

Mark Hinkle, LinuxWorld editor in chief, vice president of strategy at Emu Software and co-founder of the Open Management Consortium, said, “Having the freedom to manage and monitor systems using the technologies you want and to have those systems interact is our long-term goal. The Open Management Consortium will start by providing a forum for collaboration among these vendors and projects.”

“Collaboration between different projects that occupy the same space is the next natural step in the evolution of open source and has the potential to radically alter the way we use open source tools,” added Ethan Galstad, founder of Nagios. “The commercial systems management space appears to be headed for a shakeup, with the open source projects participating in the Open Management Consortium leading the charge. I’m definitely excited that the Nagios project is part of this effort.”

Mike Erwin, founder and chief executive officer of Symbiot said, “I’m excited to see an organization like the Open Management Consortium through which security tools can be integrated with other systems monitoring, administrative and management systems to provide a cohesive vantage of an organization’s technology landscape.”

“The Open Management Consortium will provide a valuable service in bringing together the various open source systems management tools and ensuring compatibility among them,” commented Jamie Cameron, leader of the popular open source management project, Webmin.

Bill Karpovich, co-founder and chief executive officer of Zenoss, added, “There is growing movement towards open source management solutions because of the dramatic cost advantages and the flexibility that we offer. By working together, we’ll be able to bring these benefits to a larger audience much more quickly.”

Membership in the Open Management Consortium will be open to like-minded open source projects and companies looking to collaborate on complimentary open source and open standards-based solutions. Additional participants will be announced shortly.

About the Open Management Consortium

The Open Management Consortium was announced to help advance the promotion, adoption, development and integration of open source systems/network management software. The founding members of the Consortium are Ayamon, Emu Software, Qlusters, Symbiot, Webmin and Zenoss. For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.openmanagement.org">http://www.openmanagement.org</a>.

About Qlusters, Inc.

Founded in 2001, Qlusters provides open source systems management software to automate the data center. openQRM significantly reduces annual management costs for the data center while helping increase server utilization and minimizing downtime for Fortune 1000 companies. Qlusters is partners with leading vendors including HP, IBM, Intel, and Red Hat. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California with offices in Israel and New York. For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.qlusters.com">http://www.qlusters.com</a>.

Emu Software

Emu Software, Inc. is the maker of NetDirector, an extensible management framework that brings features such as rollback, policy-based administration, multi-server changes, and an ergonomic interface to open source systems. Emu Software is the corporate sponsor of the open source NetDirector project and offers support and service offerings around the open source tools. Emu Software strives to deliver the leading cross-platform, cross-distribution configuration management solution for open source services such as Apache, Bind, Sendmail, and many others. Emu Software is headquartered in Cary, N.C. For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.emusoftware.com">http://www.emusoftware.com</a>.

About Ayamon, LLC

Ayamon, LLC was founded in 2003 with the purpose of helping to expand awareness and adoption of Open Source software in businesses and organizations worldwide. We believe strongly in the power, flexibility, outstanding value, and societal benefits that Open Source software has to offer. For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.ayamon.com">http://www.ayamon.com</a>.

About Symbiot, Inc.

Symbiot is a leading provider of intelligent security infrastructure management systems (iSIMS). As the pioneer in applying risk metrics to adaptive network security, Symbiot utilizes proprietary genetic algorithms to measure, manage and mitigate risk to your networked assets. Through Symbiot.NET, Symbiot’s customers benefit from adaptive profiles defined from industry groups, and other Symbiot customers for community centric security; a new approach to mitigating risk. For more information, please visit <a href="http://www.symbiot.com">http://www.symbiot.com</a>.

About Webmin

Webmin is a web-based interface for system administration for Unix. Using any browser that supports tables and forms (and Java for the File Manager module), you can setup user accounts, Apache, DNS, file sharing and so on. Webmin consists of a simple web server, and a number of CGI programs which directly update system files like /etc/inetd.conf and /etc/passwd. The web server and all CGI programs are written in Perl version 5, and use no non-standard Perl modules. <a href="http://webmin.com">http://webmin.com</a>.

About Zenoss, Inc.

Based in Annapolis, Maryland, Zenoss, Inc. is a systems management software company that is lowering the cost and complexity of enterprise systems monitoring and management through the power of its innovative software and open source development. The Zenoss software product provides an integrated, highly automated enterprise monitoring solution and is available for download at <a href="http://www.zenoss.org">http://www.zenoss.org</a>.

Contact

whurley

Ph: (512) 484-2550

E-mail: whurley@openmanagement.org

Schwartz Communications, Inc.

Michael Celiceo

Ph: (415) 512-0770

E-mail: qlusters@schwartz-pr.com