best practices for systems and network...

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Best Practices for Systems and Network Management

© 2004 TechTarget

BIO

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By Richard L. Ptak and Jasmine Noel

Richard L. Ptak—Mr. Ptak is Founder and Partner of Ptak, Noel & Associates. He has over 30 years of experience in systems product management. He was Vice President at Hurwitz Group and D.H. Brown Associates and worked at Western Electric's Electronic Switch Manufacturing Division and Digital Equipment Corporation. He is frequently quoted in the trade press and is author of the Manager’s Guide to Distributed Environments.

Jasmine Noel—Ms. Noel is Founder and Partner of Ptak, Noel & Associates. A recognized expert in infrastructure management, Jasmine has eight years experience as an analyst and researcher. Previously, she served as Director of Systems and Applications management at Hurwitz Group. She was also a senior analyst at D.H. Brown Associates, where her responsibilities included technology trend analysis in the network and systems management space.

This IT Briefing is based on a Ptak, Noel & Associates/TechTarget webcast, “Best Practices for Systems and Network Management.” To view this webcast online, please click the link.

This TechTarget IT Briefing covers the following topics:• Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1• Implementing Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

• Producing a Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2• Using an Incremental Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3• Selecting Products . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

• Systems Management Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5• Applying a Best Practices Templates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5• Integrating with the Corporate Service Desk . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

• Network Management Example . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8• Bringing the Shop Under Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9• Implementing Change Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9• Enacting Policy Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

• Current Vendor Products and Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11• Summary of Best Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12• Common Questions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13• For More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Copyright © 2004 Ptak, Noel & Associates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction, adaptation, or translation without prior written permission is prohibited, except as allowed under the copyright laws.

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1 IT Briefing:Best Practices for Systems and Network Management Sponsored By:


OverviewSystems and network management solutions have steadily evolved over the last several years, reaching a point where the industry now offers a number of efficient, cost-effective approaches. System architects and administrators planning to implement and man-age a complex IT infrastructure need to consider two elements: the practices most likely to be effective within their organization and the amount of work required to manage the organizational resources. Any practice that does not reduce the overall administra-tive workload is not truly a best practice.

Management best practices should be:

• Efficient: Processes and techniques should reduce the total amount of work administrators do to manage systems and network resources.

• Easily customized: Practices should accommo-date particular environmental, departmental and corporate personalities.

• Uniform: Best practices should be consistently fol-lowed by all administrators.

• Well-documented: All processes should be docu-mented for integrity.

• Accessible: Practices should be accessible to encourage widespread use.

• Simple: Best practices should use management technology judiciously to simplify use.

This paper discusses where best practices come from and how a company goes about implementing them. It then presents Systems Management and Networking Management examples to demonstrate how some companies have gone from a generic best practices list or template to practices that have a high proba-bility of being very effective within that organization.

Implementing Best PracticesBest practices are processes and techniques that reduce the total amount of work that administrators must perform to manage a resource or group of resources. Basically, if a practice does not reduce the overall work, then it really isn’t a best practice. Trade-offs to this simple rule do exist, however. For exam-ple, an administrator performing 30 minutes more work in change management might find that work-load offset by the 2 to 6 hours in availability trouble-shooting that can then be performed using readily available configuration information.

But, in general, applying best practices saves time and eases frustrations. Best practices templates can be found everywhere, available through analyst firms, technology magazines, management vendors, con-sulting firms, and so on. Before use, however, these templates must be customized to fit the actual day-to-day needs within a specific environment. In this case, one size definitely does not fit all.

Any practice that is not consistently followed, fully documented, or easy to perform cannot really be con-sidered a best practice. It is essentially a wish list and wish lists can't manage an infrastructure effectively.

Finally, products by themselves are not best prac-tices. Products can help automate or simplify a best practice, but simply purchasing and implementing a product will not deliver the productivity gains expected from implementing a best practice.

Best practices are designed to simplify management, including the types of functions shown in Figure 1. Regardless of whether an administrator is managing devices, processes, applications, networks, or people, some generic management functions are common to most work environments. For example, management tools need to recognize what resources are available and what the capacities are or how those resources are configured and how well are they performing. To achieve these functions requires different informa-tion, depending on what resources are being man-aged. For example, an administrator managing


servers needs to know about the operating system (OS) configuration, whereas, an administrator man-aging staff members needs to know about their skill sets, and so on.

Both of these resources—servers and staff members—could fall under the generic asset and configuration management category. Best practices arise from determining the specific details for achieving each of these functions for each particular resource involved. All these functions are important—they are all inter-related. What you tackle first depends on the particu-lar situation and the types of difficulties that the administrators and managers are facing. For exam-ple, if your company has suffered several recent virus attacks, security and risk mitigation will clearly be at the top of your list. But, regardless of the area within which you choose to start, make sure that best prac-tices are implemented effectively.

A key prerequisite when implementing best practices is to remember that you are asking people to change familiar procedures. Change requires effort even when everyone agrees that it is necessary. Spend the necessary time and manage the best practices imple-mentation process in the same manner you would

manage deploying a new application or instituting a new software development process.

Typically, the implementation will involve a team, some members of which may not be initially con-vinced of the need to establish a working structure for the implementation. Creating a flexible and workable plan helps avoid repeating mistakes and ensures con-sistency of procedures and a documentation trail to measure effectiveness. Everyone has experienced the frustration of projects that are implemented and completed, but offer no means to measure what was accomplished or track progress through documenta-tion of the implementation. Success in those types of cases has been declared rather than demonstrated.

Producing a PlanA plan, as shown in Figure 2, helps determine where you are today, as well as identifying what is going right and what is going wrong as tasks are com-pleted. A plan also establishes a benchmark metric for performance against which you can measure progress. You want to be able to evaluate what is being done well compared to what is not being done well, identifying any holes in your process. You want

Figure 1


Figure 2

to establish a stop-gap analysis of the processes and behavior that exists today. And, most importantly, you want to establish an implementation plan—a map charting what you want to do, the sequence of events, the time line for completion, and how you are going to do accomplish the tasks involved.

As you get started, you may want to choose and cus-tomize a template, selecting one from those available on the Internet or through another source. Templates help identify requirements, but then the templates have to be standardized. The standardized version should be uncluttered and intuitive. Begin the design from one of the templates available on the Internet and customize it to fit your organization.

Getting the team to buy in to the approach is critical. Implementing best practices successfully requires a committed team and participation by everyone. Tasks must be prioritized and the effort to be expended by each team member should be clear. Ongoing docu-mentation is also important—who is doing what and what has been accomplished. Specific points of progress should be identified and documented as you move along. Finally, you want to identify training requirements, application and product inventory,

skills inventory, gap analysis; be able to understand what kinds of changes you may need to make in your team’s skill set in order to achieve and implement the best practices in your plan.

Using an Incremental ApproachWhen implementing best practices, use an incremen-tal, phased approach. An iterative process that relies on step-by-step planning often achieves the best results. As shown in Figure 3, survey what is already in place, determine the processes that exist and what processes and polices are being followed. Look at what applications, programs and tools are currently being used in your environment. Administrators sometimes discover that the problem is not that a process or procedure or policy does not exist, but that it isn’t being followed. In many cases, tuning, documentation and consistency in implementation can solve the problems that exist there today. You can only accomplish this if you spend time at the start of a project evaluating where you are today.

To get started, choose an area or task which is doable. Don’t begin with the most visible and high-risk process. Prioritize individual tasks, but don’t


Figure 3

Figure 4


select a project task that is so meaningless or small that progress will be essentially meaningless. Ideally, you want to select a process or a situation where you can measure and document the current situation. This lets you define and measure the progress that is made as you implement your best practices imple-mentation.

Identify success metrics and document how they will be measured. What does success look like? What demonstrates success and how will it be measured? Record the current rate and then record the final rate. Be rigorous about documentation; it is very impor-tant to record the processes and the policies that you are following as you work through and solve the problem.

The watch word in best-practices implementation is reuse: develop a process or a practice, and then apply and improve it through evaluation, repetition and review.

Selecting ProductsIn selecting products for best-practices implementa-tions, weigh vendor and analyst evaluations carefully, but ultimately you must rely on your own judgment and the requirements of your organization to make the best decision. Vendors and analysts raise useful products issues and delineate features that can be helpful in the decision-making process. Figure 4 sum-marizes the process of selecting a product.

A single report or feature list won’t give you the understanding of how to apply those features to your unique situation and environment. The ultimate product-selection decision rests with you and your team. It has to be a team decision, because the team members will be the ones using the selected product. Product selection is often the last step in implement-ing best practices. Be sure to clearly understand and keep track of requirements and capabilities, so that you don't get side tracked by long feature lists and marketing hyperbole. Keep all parties in your organi-zation informed of what is being done and what is being accomplished so you can identify and track success (or the lack of it). Success should be recog-nized and rewarded. Any lack of success also needs to be identified so that the team can correct problems as they develop and return to a more productive course.

Systems ManagementExampleSystems management offers a useful example for examining the various issues involved in implement-ing best practices. In this example based on an actual company, as shown in Figure 5, the Web server farm includes clusters of Web servers that should always have the same configuration. The problem is that sometimes an administrator changes one setting on one server and not the others in the cluster.

To complicate the issue, the company also has some application servers that use different configurations. These servers are frequently changed by developers and application managers in an inconsistent way. When problems occur, no one is ever sure of what the ideal configuration should be, because this ideal configuration was never captured.

Other issues also affect the situation. Each server manager uses an individual configuration list—some are more updated than others, containing informa-tion that is not shared, performance thresholds are manually set, and so on. Through a flood of alerts, staff members try to figure out whether system alerts indicate a real problem or a temporary one. Because of all these recurring events, there was significant internal company resistance to integrating with the enterprise servers. Server managers thought that interacting with the help desk would be a waste of time—trying to close out events that were insignifi-cant, problematic events. These are fairly typical prob-lems common in a number of different companies.

Applying a Best Practices TemplateTo address these challenges, the VP of Systems went online, read some analyst reports, read some case studies, and came up with a list of best practices tem-plates designed to alleviate the problems that were occurring. Figure 6 shows the template that was cre-ated to contend with these issues.

The company wanted to have a centralized database of system configurations and to know the relation-ship of systems in the cluster. The systems had to be kept awake to keep the databases current. For opti-mal availability and real-time performance manage-ment, the company also needed to monitor systems fault, performance and utilization thresholds.


Figure 5

Figure 6


Problems must be consistently tracked to maintain an ongoing record of system operation. The company had been using the configuration database to deter-mine what changes took place when problems occurred. The company also needed a consistent approach to changing the system configuration. Changes in configuration were often the cause of the performance and availability problems. By tightening the loop, many of the problems that the company was seeing could be circumvented.

As the company attempted to apply the best prac-tices template, they quickly realized that it didn’t fit the existing environment. The VP gathered his man-agers and together they customized the list to make it workable in their environment. The list they mutually developed became the one that would be imple-mented. For example, one of the managers said, “We have all of these Web servers with the same configu-ration, so we would like to see a database of golden images for our Web server cluster. We’d also like an automated way to restore those golden images if any unauthorized configuration changes are detected.” Another administrator responded, “That's fine, but we also need to have a change control process to actually modify the golden images. Microsoft is going

to be releasing patches and updates for them on a regular basis. If you don’t have a way to change the golden images, then we’re back to making ad hoc changes to the cluster.”

So, as a part of creating a customized best practices approach, the company implemented a change pro-cess for handling the golden image database and automating restoration of it, as shown in Figure 7.

Integrating with the Corporate Service DeskSimilarly, the delay for integration with the corporate service desk was due to the numerous events gener-ated by the static performance threshold. The com-pany decided they needed to try an approach other than manually setting one threshold for every server metric. To accomplish this, they sought a product that could automatically discover the performance baseline of the metric desired and then apply that baseline as the threshold.

The baseline recognizes that 2 o’clock on Friday after-noons a CPU utilization spike occurs or that between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. the CPU utilization should always

Figure 7


be low. Events are only generated if the behavior of the server is outside of that normal perceived range. Instead of getting eight events per day, each of which the administrators would have to read through and analyze, the total would be closer to eight events per month. At this level for a single server, they felt they could confidently integrate with the trouble executing process.

The end result was a set of best practices that the server managers had a part in customizing for their particular needs. This example illustrates a workable technique for implementing systems management best practices from a report or a case study into a via-ble system well suited to a particular organization.

Network Management ExampleThe network management example in this section examines a number of problems and the underlying causes that exist in a sample environment. The shop discussed has been operating with a rather casual management structure. Unlike a lot of shops, pur-chase records of devices are available, as well as

records of earlier attempts to create and maintain an inventory and configuration file. The shop also has a manually created and maintained map that illustrates the network devices that exist and their locations. However, with continued network growth the increased day-to-day operational demands, updating of records lapsed and fell behind. The operations team found their time consumed in responding to fire-fighting activities—emergency procedures, urgent maintenance, critical troubleshooting and repair tasks. Figure 8 illustrates the scenario faced by the shop.

Contending with these events was made more diffi-cult by the lack of any formal processes and proce-dures. As a result, the team found their problems multiplying and the time to repair systems to be back online increased dramatically. With no central record of inventory, an up-to-date topology map, or current configuration information, they found that their asset management was full of errors. Their analytics and diagnostics to determine the source and cause of problems was consuming more and more time. Resolving problems grew steadily more difficult, more labor intensive and very time consuming. More and more time was being spent maintaining the

Figure 8


environment rather than trying to improve network efficiency for business advantage.

The shop also did not have processes in place for change authorization and implementation. When manual changes were made and frequent outages took place, statistics indicated that about 70 percent of the network outages were due to misconfigured devices and/or incorrect changes.

The shop also had increased vulnerability and weak security on the network. No processes or policies controlled who made changes to the network. Attempts to set up policies failed through lack of enforcement.

To compound the problems, the shop had compli-ance failures. Mandated compliance under Sarbanes-Oxley was required, but the team found that they were not maintaining to the required standards or adhering to compliance mandates. Because they couldn’t prove their attempts to maintain the compli-ance with the letter of the law, this created potential legal and liability exposure. Customer data might be accessed and customer records could be exposed because of poor consistency in device configurations. Management becomes much more difficult when trying to maintain multiple devices or even the same devices at different configuration.

The shop began using more and more staff time for simple tasks and prolonged efforts were required just to accomplish simple maintenance. Clearly, this situ-ation could not be allowed to continue. The team decided to investigate and implement best practices for network management. Prior to a review of recommended best practices, the shop followed earlier processes, documenting their current state of understanding and setting priorities based on the requirements of their own operational and business environment. Processes were fully documented and metrics established to measure a baseline state and create tangible objectives to achieve through the best practices implementation. Each team member had an identified role in the process of investigating and implementing best practices procedures.

Bringing the Shop Under ControlTo bring the shop under control, the team imple-mented best practices in the areas of asset and con-figuration management, topology discovery, change management, and policy management. Searching

through vendor sites on the Internet and performing literature searches through TechTarget and other sites, the team collected information about recom-mended best practices in these areas. These efforts led to templates describing generic activities and the primary tasks that should be performed. Although the templates provided recommended tasks and func-tions, they did not supply the specific details—those actual steps required when implementing best prac-tices for a specific shop.

For each key area, the team set about defining and implementing a set of processes to be followed con-sistently by all members of the team. The templates provided basic guidelines for the processes that needed to be accomplished. For example, in the asset and configuration management area, the recommen-dations included building a centralized database of all of the device configurations. The team had to decide whether this should include an archive of the past golden configurations, based upon their current needs and capabilities. They had to decide whether it made sense to maintain a library of known good con-figurations and to perform device discovery on a scheduled basis to find out what new devices may have been introduced in to the network. For example, is the VP of Sales creating network security risks by using his Internet-enabled phone to read his mail?

Implementing Change ManagementIn this example, the template for change manage-ment describes steps to be taken, but it doesn’t specify what processes to implement or how these processes will be managed and monitored. This task belongs to the team. Processes must reflect the prior-ities and structure within the operating organization. A change management process should include details such as:

• who can initiate a change request

• who has to approve the change

• what documentation is needed in the change request

• who has to review the documentation and approve change requests

• who is responsible for scheduling and actually implementing the change on the device


• what has to be done to review after a change has been made on a device before that device is returned into service

• what documentation has to be retained after a change has been made to verify that the change has been made and that it has been made through-out the environment

All these kinds of details have to be developed to fill out the template.

Enacting Policy ManagementPolicy management includes the tasks of document-ing and prioritizing policies. Is everyone aware of what polices exist and how they are applied or even that they should be applied? What procedures are in place to enforce polices or monitor that they are being correctly applied? Are they being consistently applied? Finally, does it make sense or is it even feasi-ble to implement a procedure of automated policy management? The details of the implementation have to be agreed upon and applied based on the available resources and practices of each individual shop and enterprise culture. The template serves to

provide a basic foundation for action and discussion. The team will then apply the policy based on individ-ual needs and operating behaviors. The template suggestions may have to be extended and adjusted to fit any special mandate under which the shop must operate.

As shown in Figure 9, the network management team examined the existing situation and devised some specific extensions to the standard template. They found that they had multiple distributed device con-figuration databases being maintained by different individuals. These databases were frequently consid-ered to be the private properties of the individuals who maintained them. Due to lack of change in management processes there was no consistency in managing who made what changes to what devices. The team decided to create a centralized configuration database for all devices. The centralized database would be the controlling authority for the appropriate device configurations. An archive would be maintained containing the previous settings and changes. The policy mappings and asset reviews were to be scheduled to ensure an accurate assess-ment, but also to identify aging assets that may require replacement, update or removal.

Figure 9


In combination with this, a formal change manage-ment process was introduced that included a com-prehensive review of how devices were protected from unauthorized changes. Traditionally, the team had operated in reactive mode—responding to prob-lems as they occurred. They decided to formalize responses to recurring problem instances. What-if scenarios for various problems were analyzed and appropriate formalized corrective action response plans were developed, documented, and stored.

Initially, these scenarios only covered basic and recurring problems. The problem resolutions would eventually be extended to include more catastrophic and infrequent procedures. Finally, a formal process for policy review was implemented. Even with a formal process in place, conflicting policies or redun-dant policies can be inadvertently created. Without a formal review and periodic evaluations, polices often grow and proliferate, even the ones that never get used. Policy maintenance becomes a problem not only because of the expense of maintaining them, but also because irrelevant, seldom-used policies can become an excuse to ignore all policies. This under-mines the overall control system. In this case, a team

was set up to identify and eliminate or revise polices that were out of date, unusable or rarely used.

Current Vendor Products and SolutionsFigure 10 provides a sampling of vendors that pro-vide products and solutions that can be used to implement best practice processes for any organiza-tion. This list is not meant to be either exhaustive or all-inclusive, but it offers a starting point for both information and reflection.

These product offerings provide a vision of the future of the IT operations that can influence your view of the responsibility of IT in the enterprise and the cre-ation and application of best practices. This can help prioritize your organizational needs and identify requirements for the best practices in your environ-ment. Some of the firms included in this diagram are aggressively pushing the boundaries of IT problem solving. These firms are delivering products that address current pressing problems, while providing technology that positions companies to address the emerging problems in complex and challenging IT operating environments.

Figure 10


Summary of Best PracticesSome generic management functions need to be addressed if you are going to administer the manage-ment of a system or network. How these functions get implemented depends on the specifics of the resources being managed. Best practices arise from determining the right course for your organization for managing the specific details of each resource.

Numerous best practice templates can be obtained from various sources. Trade publications are devoting increasing attention to configuration and change management, relationship discoveries and policy management for networks and system or servers.

This focus of attention helps organizations begin their investigation into a working best practices model without spending the time to talk to the management staff.

To customize the lists for an individual situation, administrators must be clear about the particular problems that need to be solved. Otherwise, it is unlikely that those templates will become true best practices adopted within the organization. As shown in Figure 11, a true best practice is one that is consis-tently used and is improved by the staff over time so that everyone can perform their jobs more effectively with minimal frustration.

Figure 11

Common Questions


Question: Must best practices be based on the purchase of a solution from a vendor?

Answer: Not at all. The last step in a best practices implementation is to look for products. Vendors can provide a starting point or a conclusion, but best practices are meant to help an organization become more effective and efficient in getting necessary tasks done. A best practice can be as simple as a change in daily operations or more thorough documenting of a process. Or, it can be as complex as implementing an automated service provisioning system. The vendors provide a starting point by supplying ideas about what is available. Vendors can also be a conclusion if your organization decides to purchase a product, but you do not have to select a vendor or purchase a product to implement a best practice.

Question: How can an IT department measure or evaluate the effectiveness of their best practices?

Answer: This goes back to the implementation con-siderations discussed earlier in this paper. Organiza-tions must define up front the problem to be solved. This will provide indications of what measures can be used to evaluate the success of the implementation. For system management, this usually involves reduc-ing the time for administrative tasks, so the success metric is simple. How long does it take to compare system configuration A to system configuration B? If it used to require 20 minutes and now it takes 2 sec-onds, then you can be confident that you have an effective best practice in place. The key is that each organization needs to determine the problem to be solved. Document how long it is taking to perform

the task today and then document how long it takes with the best practice in place.

Question: Is all the up-front time, identifying and analyzing system or network issues, really necessary? Or, are the problems that need to be addressed very obvious sometimes, so that you can be more effec-tive if you move directly to solving a problem?

Answer: The time spent in planning and analyzing is fundamental to the success of the best practices. Often, companies appear very successful because they solve immediate problems, but if they do not attack the root cause of a problem, they will waste resources by buying or focusing on applying the wrong solution to a real problem. Analyze, plan and then act—that should be the guideline.

Question: Once a company has developed a solid set of best practices, how do you know when it is time to go back and revise or reevaluate or any related policy?

Answer: The goal is to continually improve the per-formance of the administrative team. A regular review of the management practices with the team mem-bers can drive this improvement. How are things going? Are you seeing issues arise that are affecting daily operations? Are new technologies available that might encourage us to rethink how we manage the infrastructure? Some companies schedule annual or semiannual reviews to address emerging issues. Other companies schedule additional reviews before bringing in a new technology. Ultimately, if you regu-larly review processes with your team, you should be able to identify areas for improvements or pinpoint inefficiencies within the system.


For More InformationPtak, Noel & Associates is an industry analyst and consulting firm serving both end users and vendors in addressing and applying their IT infrastructure to the solution of business problems. Ptak, Noel & Associates will be publishing a series of papers dur-ing the latter part of 2004 discussing how to achieve IT operational excellence. These papers will provide guidance for end users in assessing themselves in five different areas to ensure that their IT organiza-tion is aligned with an appropriate business strategy. Visit www.ptaknoelassociates.com for additional details.

Sponsored by Computer Associates. Computer Associates International Incorporated or CA is a leading worldwide provider of solutions and services for the management of IT infrastructure, business information and application development. For more information, visit www.cai.com.

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