Manageability Technologies in Kernel, User Space, and Beyond

Managing a Linux system can be as easy as connecting to a remote system and run some of the system tool available with most Linux distributions. It gets difficult when you have to manage multiple remote systems, and many Linux admins do work in environments with hundreds or even thousands of systems.

Anas Nashif

Wednesday, December 19th, 2007

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Managing a Linux system can be as easy as connecting to a remote system and run some of the system tool available with most Linux distributions. It gets difficult when you have to manage multiple remote systems, this can start with a few web servers you are maintaining and go all the way to thousands of systems, especially in enterprises and server farms.

Since the introduction of remote server management, both the technology from vendors and the requirements of IT organizations have changed dramatically. Many of the management technologies that have been available in server platforms for years are moving to the enterprise desktop bringing system management not only to enterprise data centers, but also to the small business and home office environment.

For years Linux system management was and is still possible using available open-source tools and system utilities that ran on the system and collected information that a system administrator could pull using a management console remotely. When it comes to choice, the Linux system administrator has a range of solutions to choose from, however, the need to converge on a consistent solution has emerged. IT professionals need standardization to improve operational efficient in heterogeneous environments and to perform certain commodity functions in a common and standard based way.

From the perspective of a system administrator, regardless of how many systems he is managing, the perfect manageability solution should fulfill the following basic requirements: