Enterprise-wide networking management and implementation

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, the Catalyst SM methodology of CSC and Service Delivery Excellence Program of the CSC (SDEP). These are contained in the Enterprise Operations Center framework. The center has reach to the group of specialized telecommunication commercial and federally concentrated focused professionals within the CSC. These groups of individuals have thousands of certifications for operating Cisco, Microsoft, Sun, Nortel, Ayaya and many other types of equipment that assists any networking or telecommunication requirements of clients who are working with the Center. (Enterprise Network Managed Services Center of Excellence)

In order to entail the network-wide maintenance at the fingertips, Aglient's Network Troubleshooting Center -- NTC indicates a great leap ahead in the management of enterprise-wide networks. NCT includes a centralized view of network health achieved from various sources, including RMON and SNMP and from the same console, centralized expert troubleshooting of remote problems applying distributed network analysis tools. The primary advantages are increasingly lesser respond and fix times and greatly lessened operational costs from both declined engineer travel to site times and from reduced network segment downtime or bad performance. NTC is adopted as console software on a central server and can conveniently acquire and allow interacting network data from multiple sources, along with standard RMON1/2 and SNMP devices, and also of Agilent's Network Analyzer hardware and software products. An excellent user interface permits the operator to analyze the overall health of the entire network and immediately identify trouble 'hotspots'. (Centralized Troubleshooting of Distributed Networks)

The NTC console operator, after detecting a problem, can zoom in and probe into the causes employing full potentiality of the expert protocol analysis executing within any of Agilent's Network Analyzer products which are being distributed at remote corners of the network. Agilent's Network Analyzer products which are both hardware and software-based is designed so as to deal with the various requirements and economic justification for both backbone and workgroup networks and can deal with multiple LAN and WAN technologies incorporating 10/10 Ethernet, Gigabit Ethernet, ATM, Frame Relay, and Packet over SONET. All make use of identical user interface and the same powerful expert analysis. NTC with help of its Network Analyzer products entail a centralized troubleshooting solution that enhances the problem resolution by entailing aggregated network-wide views of performance across multiple LAN and WAN technologies; provides unprecedented integration between problem isolation and troubleshooting; makes possible rapid progression from problem detection and isolation to dealing with integrated RMON statistics analysis and advanced levels of troubleshooting; Estimates the requirements for skilled engineers/technicians at different locations, thus ensuring a small workforce and reducing the time for travel. (Centralized Troubleshooting of Distributed Networks)

Networking and Internet have entailed the corporations a radical instrument for improving productivity and to enhance profitability, opening up the path for the scope of new businesses by means of e-commerce and extranets. This unbelievable technological improvement has infused speedy progress of employee connectivity and the adoption of TCP/IP as the standard network protocol giving rise to an enhanced growth of IP addresses which are beyond the regulation of IT departments. The management of enterprise-wide network involves automation of your IP addresses; ensures reliable and efficient growth of the network; unifying the process of global network infrastructure; creating a shield against the events of network failure; and implementation of the new breed of the Director Services. Meta IP applies a standards-based implementation of the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol -- DHCP for automation of the IP address which entails a saving up to 83%. (Control your network: Why You Need IP Address Management)

The benefits accrued out of Meta IP implementation include: enhancement of department efficiency; creation of reliable addressing reducing the risk of duplicate IP addresses, enhance accountability allowing to track your employees to individual IP addresses regardless of the workstations they log on to; it facilitate network variations to desktop. The attribute of distributed and modular architecture of Meta IP has allowed thousands of deployments worldwide spanning from small ISPs to global conglomerates with distributed networks and administration. Such architecture permits organizations to implement an IP address management solution dependably and effectively irrespective of the size of topology. The Meta IP can manage global network services from one central place applying the Meta IP Multi-view Interface.

The Multi-view Interface presents information on all managed DNS and DHCP services from four varied views: services, Networks, Locations and Dynamic. Meta IP makes it possible to generate an overarching IP address and name space schema for the global organization by centralizing all network service information under one interface. Meta IP generates a shield against duplicate IP address with a standards-based implementation of DHCP. The Meta IP of Meta-Info includes multiple levels of fault tolerance to maintain network access up and running. The first level of fault tolerance incorporates redundant service architecture. When a service interrupts, the secondary can immediately take over the role of the primary. In case of the Meta IP DHCP service, this becomes a real time, 100% redundant service, instead of the conventional method of distributing such lease pools making sure of the complete availability of all IP addresses. (Control your network: Why You Need IP Address Management)

Conventionally the organizations depend on policies and communications of high level instructions from the management. Issue of such documents once developed at one time in the organization's evolution to capture the current environment. One of the major confrontations for an organization in this area is the persistent growth and adaptation of the policies to mirror the transformation within the organization. The rapid area of growth and change within an organization is Information Systems. With the rapid growth and inclination towards new technologies, organizations discover themselves striving to maintain present technical environments with the traditional policies. Moreover, the emergence of new technology strategies like Intranets and Extranets, security and the protection of informational assets has become significant. (Defining an enterprise-wide Security Framework)

The enterprise-wide Information Systems Security Policy is considered to be the first step and it is required to be consistently implemented even as business requirements vary. However, most of the companies seen to have only a small bits and pieces of security found dispersed throughout the organization. Such policies are seen to be only a consolation for the departments or individual to feel safer but they have little effect to safeguard the enterprise as a whole. In order to effectively deal with such requirements, PricewaterhouseCoopers has devised a security knowledge management system under the heads of the Enterprise Security Architecture System -- ESAS. The basic idea is to assist an organization in entailing a key security infrastructure tool. Normally, ESAS is built on PPT methodology involving People, Policy and Technology. The PPT methodology regards the security process as a mixture of these three elements and predicts the control environment to be greatly enhanced when such three elements work in combination. (Defining an enterprise-wide Security Framework)

It has been increasingly challenging for the vendors providing security capabilities to enterprises. Many players from carriers to traditional firewall companies and software vendors and presently wireless vendors are peeping into the arena. Aruba wireless stated to address the classical enterprise-wide security incorporating endpoint security with an extension to its grid architecture that permits access points to be plugged into prevailing Ethernet ports and leverage the present cabling infrastructure. While those mobile tools interact to the corporate network through a WLAN or by plugging into a wired Ethernet port, they normally circumvent the firewalls and the intrusion safeguard systems in the corporate data center guarding the Internet perimeter. The grid points are designed to eliminate the necessity to replicate very expensive security systems in all the wiring closets throughout the enterprise. Instead the inexpensive grid points acquire and tunnel wired user traffic to the controllers in the data center for policy implementation. (Aruba tackles enterprise-wide security)