IT Architectures and Middleware: Strategies for Building Large, Integrated Systems, Second Edition

9. Systems Management

Systems management comprises many functions. One is security, which we consider to be a sufficiently important subject in its own right to merit a separate chapter—the next one. This chapter is concerned with the other aspects of systems management.

The many facets of systems management have spawned a plethora of software products, and even some hardware, and serious standardization efforts in an attempt to create order. To cover the subject exhaustively would require a book, probably several volumes long. We have therefore chosen to focus on the specific problems raised by systems management in distributed environments. Distribution raises a number of interesting problems, such as relating the failure of component parts ...