Forums Unite on Management Standards

Two key industry groups devoted to interoperability and the deployment of blade server technology have joined forces in an attempt to boost common information standards in the data center (see DMTF, Blade Systems Alliance Team).

Officials from the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) and the Blade Systems Alliance (BladeS) have teamed up to drive interoperability using the Task Forces Common Information Model (CIM). This aims to provide a much-needed common definition of management information for systems, networks, applications, and services.

The move spells good news for end-users, according to Daniel Fleischer, senior research analyst at IDC. He says, "Managing data centers can be a major headache, so anything that is integrating the thought processes behind systems management and hardware has to be a good thing."

Todd Guay, vice president of technology at DMTF belives that the group's work with the Blade community will help spread the CIM message. “BladeS will provide DMTF with an important feedback loop that will help us continue to improve our standards and educate this community on the value of CIM,” he's quoted as saying in the DMTF press release.

The original CIM specification was launched in June 1999, although the schema has been available since 1998. CIM also serves as the information model for DMTF’s Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) and Directory Enabled Network (DEN) initiatives to enable end-to-end management of networked environments.DMTF already boasts more than 2,300 active members, and BladeS brings together a wide community of end-users, analysts, consultants, and vendors. Blade technology offers a number of benefits to users, according to Fleischer: "Blade servers can offer users a better total cost of ownership and return on investment through greater flexibility and improved manageability.

"The development of blades means that servers can now be considered a resource and shared according to specific demands."

Dennis Carlson of Unisys Corp. (NYSE: UIS), who is also president of the Blade Systems Alliance, describes the DMTF as “the standards-setting body most relevant to our members. This alliance partnership provides a key avenue of communication between those working on the DMTF’s blade standards and those who will be impacted by them -- the BladeS membership.”

James Rogers, Site Editor, Next-gen Data Center Forum