Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative Designed to Help IT Customers Manage their Data Centers

Microsoft Dynamic Systems Initiative Designed to Help IT Customers Manage their Data Centers PressPass: What lies ahead on the DSI roadmap?
Veghte: We are entering a very exciting time. ISVs can begin to deliver some of the Design for Operations benefits to their customers on the Windows platform today by developing what we call management packs for Microsoft Operations Manager. By writing a management pack, ISVs can encode the knowledge that they have about how their application behaves in a way that makes it much easier to manage. Going forward we are building some of that same capability into our Visual Studio development tools product line. Architects and developers will be able to develop operationally-aware applications, leveraging an underlying technology we call the System Definition Model (SDM).
SDM is a model that is used to create definitions of a set of related software and/or hardware resources working together to accomplish a common function. Using the SDM, businesses can create a live blueprint of an entire system. This blueprint can be created and manipulated with various software tools and is used to define system elements and capture data pertinent to development, deployment and operations – making it relevant across the entire IT life cycle.
Longer term, we are making investments not only in development tools, but across the board in support of the SDM. In the operating system, we will be able to automate how customers deploy distributed applications and their underlying resources based on the SDM description. SDM aware applications will be easier to deploy, monitor and update. The management tools that leverage the SDM infrastructure and SDM aware applications will be able to provide power new system level management capabilities in a highly automated way.
We really are taking a different approach with DSI. Instead of a band-aid solution that only goes a foot below the surface, we are addressing the inefficiencies and complexities inherent in today’s data centers by re-architecting from the ground up, while providing customers a way to also tie into and incorporate their existing investments. If the operationally aware platform does not extend that intelligence into the application layer – then you are only postponing future roadblocks."