4   Managing Application Services: A Progressive Approach

Providing Availability

Just a few short years ago, business ran eight or twelve-hour days, five days a week.

IT managers could perform maintenance, test new environments, and change system

configurations during the off hours. But the new Net-driven economy has virtually

eliminated this. Application services, particularly those accessible via the Web, are

used continuously across time zones and geographies. Because these application

services are business critical, keeping them continuously available takes precedence

over any other IT operation, which makes it difficult to take any system offline for

even the smallest amount of time.

To assure near 24x7 uptime, many enterprises moved to a multitiered architecture

with redundant or replicated systems at every layer. This structure enables some

systems to be offline while maintaining a moderate level of service delivery. Again,

the result is a trade-off between maintaining service levels and increasing the

complexity and costs of managing the infrastructure.

Managing Complexity

The third and most difficult challenge arising from the Net Effect is the

resulting complexity of the massively scaled, multitiered infrastructure.

Environments can easily grow to hundreds of individual servers, all requiring

monitoring, tracking, maintenance, and upgrading for each instance of the operating

environment and every application service. While an individual server and

application service is simple to manage, a thousand systems are not, even if they are

configured identically. The simplest tasks, such as applying an operating system

patch or modifying a database, become management nightmares.

One leading brokerage firm recently reported making nearly 3000 changes to their

Web infrastructure every month. At these levels, even the best practices and

disciplined techniques of the traditional data center fall short. Numerous changes

strain the staff s ability to complete accurate logging, testing, and tracking

procedures, and add incalculable risks to infrastructure operations.

Decreasing risk depends on reducing the complexity of the infrastructure. This is

where Sun's approach to Service Management shines. Sun's solutions enable IT

organizations to manage resources more efficiently and provide high levels of

application services.