HP ProLiant 1850R Compaq's Cluster Management Initiative - Page 1

HARVARD RESEARCH GROUP
COMPAQ'S CLUSTER MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE Harvard Research Group has determined through extensive primary and secondary research that today's business managers want Enterprise Management Systems that can help them gain control over the business process and reduce complexity. IT managers are increasingly looking for ways to effectively and efficiently implement new technologies while at the same time achieve a seamless and cost effective way to manage their systems and software. They want to "virtualize" their system environment and manage it as if it were a single logical system. At the same time, the rapid growth in the number of business-critical applications running on Intel-based systems coupled with the need for high availability and continuous data access is driving the demand for clustered servers. While clusters help solve problems with availability and scalability, they also bring increased complexity, immature management tools, and added cost. This situation is most evident in the Intel server market where the use of Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) is accelerating faster than the capability of the tools that manage it. Harvard Research Group has spoken with more than 700 users of highly available systems. Our findings and research show that users of high availability systems typically have mixed operating system and hardware environments, and believe that current cluster system management tools are too complex and costly. They view the current set of cluster administration tools as point products that are difficult to integrate, proprietary in nature, and require too much time and money to properly implement. Many of them have expressed the desire to reduce the complexity of cluster configuration, administration, and problem determination / resolution. At the same time, they have expressed a desire to minimize the number of interfaces and tools they need to manage their system and clustered environments. Harvard Research Group believes that all clustered solutions, still lack adequate and extensible cluster monitor / management tools. While there are management tools that partially address this issue for a particular operating environment (HP/UX, Solaris, NT), they tend to be limited in their functionality and unable to address the larger issue of managing multiple and dispersed cluster environments. This is contributing to the high cost of ownership of server hardware and causing potential profits to be consumed by increased administrative staff and lower user productivity. Studies have shown that deploying manageable systems in concert with well managed IT processes can create actual value for a company. It stands to reason, then, that tightly integrating cluster management tools with the non-clustered systems management interface should create more value. It appears that Compaq, in concert with its acquisitions of Tandem Computer and Digital Equipment Corporation, is building itself into an enterprise systems provider with some key strides in changing the direction of enterprise systems management. In doing so, Compaq has defined some interesting goals and is delivering on these goals. Compaq's E2000 Platform Architecture and Cluster Management Vision HARVARD RESEARCH GROUP  Box 297  HARVARD, MA 01451 USA  http:/www.hrgresearch.com Copyright 1999 Harvard Research Group. Reproduction is forbidden unless authorized. For additional copies call (978) 263-3399