High Availability: Design, Techniques, and Processes

Chapter 6. From Centralized to Distributed Computing Environments

Systems Management Disciplines

Many systems management disciplines were crafted during the mainframe-centric era. Because of their close ties with "big iron," advocates of the shift away from centralized computing also abandoned systems management disciplines, believing their new world order would not need them. They were wrong.

Today, we see distributed computing environments being challenged by the same problems that confronted mainframe-centric IT organizations — how to satisfy users, how to handle problems, managing changes, securing the computing environment, etc. In fact, the problem is even more complex, because the resources that need to be managed are physically farther apart ...