Term Paper on "Management of Enterprise Wide Networking"

Term Paper 10 pages (3545 words) Sources: 1+

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Management of Enterprise-Wide Networking

The concept of network management broadly indicates managing of computer networks. There prevails an extensive variety of software and hardware products that assist the network system administrators to handle a network. The field of network management involves security-confirming the safeguard of the network from the threats of unauthorized users; performance-emphasizing on the avoidance of the bottlenecks in the network; reliability-ensuring the provision of network resources to the users and attending to the hardware and software failures. (Network Management)

The common objective of enterprise-wide networking managers has been to ensure centrally managed enterprise-wide data protection for the users in a divergent environment. The enterprise visualizes its capability of preserving and restoring data is an obligation as a dial tone. However, the divergent nature of network storage environment necessitates backup solutions to cater to the requirement of an innumerable number of operating system platforms and media devices. The requirement in such lines is considered as one of the driving forces that led to devising of the standard Network Data Management Protocol -- NDMP, regarded as a scalable solution for such problems by defining a common architecture for preservation and restoration of data located on heterogeneous file servers in the enterprise. (Network Data Management Protocol Primer)

NDMP is regarded as an open-standard protocol for performing network-based backup of storage devices in the enterprise. NDMP provides the first scope of attaining true solutions for enterprise-wide heterogeneous storage management. Presently, the storage management providers become accustomed to their architecture to the operating systems and hardware they sustain. This approach gives rise to the bloated implementation inextricably related to the layers of operating system and hardware dependencies. Organizations that apply such backup solutions are compelled to function around such dependencies to cater to the departmental systems across the enterprise. (Network Data Management Protocol Primer)

In order to resolve such issues NDMP is designed by creating a universal agent that can conveniently be adopted by all centralized backup applications and file servers. This plug and play approach allows administrator's backup data inside the whole enterprise applying any combination of NDMP compliant network attached servers, backup devices and management applications. In this manner NDMP transfers the present paradigm so that the backup is driven at the enterprise level and the platforms can be driven at the departmental levels. The NDMP with its present approach cater to the necessity for centralized regulation of enterprise-wide network data management along with disparate operating systems and hardware architectures; affords to reduce the network traffic, minimizes costs and avoids concessions to departmental systems in the enterprise; permits backup and network-attached storage -- NAS vendors to focus on their prime competencies; entails the users with an unprecedented level of choice and interoperability.

In the present day world of information rich society, enhancing levels of information are sflowing into organizations from the Internet, e-commerce sites, extranets, intranets, Unix® and Windows NT® based networks and also from data rich conduits. The plethora of information led the organizations to enhance their storage capacity every 12 to 18 months. Some e-commerce (.com) organizations are growingly enhancing their data expanding capacities by 100% every month. The Dataquest reports that the global RAID storage market for the UNIX and Windows NT operating platforms was about $15.0 billion in the year 1998 and was anticipated to enhance at an annual compound rate of 22% to about $39.8 by the year 2003. The study made by Strategic Research involves the cost of managing storage to be above 10 times the initial costs of the storage device. These statistics entail the present day enterprises to necessitate a complete, centralized and simple way out for backing up data resting on disparate operating systems and NAS devices to address such issues effectively. (Network Data Management Protocol Primer)

The backup solutions are required to be compatible to backup of all operating systems and media device platforms applied for storing data in the enterprise; they are required to be scalable; should be able to enhance the performance of the organizational expectations and requirements. The NDMP strives to cater to the strategic necessities to centrally manage and regulate distributed data while minimizing network traffic. NDMP strives to isolate the data path as an embedded protocol and regulate the path so network data can be backed up locally and yet handled from a central location. The concerns for back up affect the solution providers such as server vendors, backup software vendors, backup device vendors and tape library vendors. Back up also influence the users those demand best of breed solutions for their specific needs.

The user demands can be best catered to by defining, promoting and adopting an open standard network-backup protocol within the scope of the backup community. Due to this the vendors can eradicate interoperability activities and focus on their prime proficiencies. This led the increasing numbers of solution providers for switching over to NDMP to provide centrally managed, enterprise-wide data protection solutions for users in diverse backgrounds. The complexities associated with data backup in an enterprise stress much emphasis and increase the importance of NDMP standard. The present system of backing up data on enterprise servers' associate with copying data stored in file systems to backup device like tape in a tape library. The back up software regulates the data being backed up and manages the database or catalog of the data being backed up. The individual backup vendors strive to adopt their own protocols so as to handle such data transfer. These results in a situation where the system calls vary by software package and often by server platform, irrespective of the fact that the architecture remains the same. (Network Data Management Protocol Primer)

NDMP is an open network protocol that standardizes the operational interfaces applied for data transfers performed during the backup and restore process. The NDMP helps the vendors to follow common interfaces for common levels of architecture data transfers. This provides for copying of file system data from the file system to the backup device applying a common interface irrespective of the platform or device. In the conventional backup system, each backup application is seen to write its own proprietary format to tape. Since NDMP is sent to integrate with a standard 'dump' backup program on the NDMP server, the data format on tape is consistent irrespective of which backup vendor acts as the NDMP client. NDMP is thought of as a network protocol that demarcates a communication link between a server and backup software. Communication is attained with the application of a set of defined interfaces. Such interfaces are XDR-encoded messages that go across a bi-directional TCP/IP connection.

The NDMP architecture goes along a client/server model, the backup software being the client to the NDMP server. It is seen that each of the software and hardware backup product work together with other management tools and applications in different modes. Following of a standard protocol can facilitate the interoperability of such products permitting them to operate more efficiently and with greater simplicity. With this objective only, NMDP has been instituted. It has been chalked out so as to resolve the problems of operation and provide interoperability in the heterogeneous enterprise. To attain this NDMP fixes a series of well-defined interfaces that deal with the transfer of file system and control data for backup and restoration functions. NDMP makes it certain that compatible products can conveniently be adopted by all users, irrespective of operating system and media device platforms. The intelligent, open-standards approach also stimulates users to take full advantage of the latest architecture, while safeguarding their investment in their existing data management solutions. (Network Data Management Protocol Primer)

The enhanced complexity of networked IT infrastructure along with the speedy growth of new technology implementations has brought in the need for network management services and the enhanced significance of end-to-end service level management. The Enterprise Network Managed Services center has an objective of providing improved IT infrastructure support taking into account the changing business and mission goals of the enterprise. Concentrating on service quality management, the Center provides the clients the capability to manage voice and data networks with an enterprise-wide view of operations, ensuring strategic management and planning for voice, video and data service delivery. The clients could attain a single operational picture of communication services that entails reducing of costs, better quality of service, and improved functionality through the Enterprise Operations Center framework of the Center. (Enterprise Network Managed Services Center of Excellence)

The Center extends its services and products to include a tailorable framework involving best experiences and service quality management models for enterprise infrastructure implementation and operations; an increased integrated management system involving the 'best of breed' toolset for the purpose of automating common functions of administration, planning, and modeling; and CSC owned and operated activities management centers for complete network infrastructure service outsourcing. The center quite successfully executes the CSC best practices in system administration and design dependency on Information Technology Infrastructure Library -- ITIL structure and guidelines, Internet Telecommunications Union standards and recommendations,… READ MORE

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