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| News: Cover Stories |  |  |
| WS-Management Specifications Submitted to DMTF for Standardization. |
Contents
Update 2007-03-23: In March 2007, the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) announced a new DASH Initiative (Desktop and mobile Architecture for System Hardware). DASH Initiative Work Groups will produce a suite of specifications taking full advantage of the DMTF's Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification to deliver standards-based Web services management for desktop and mobile client systems. See details in the news article "DMTF Desktop and Mobile Architecture for System Hardware (DASH) Initiative."
Update: WS-Management was ratified as a Preliminary Standard at DMTF in August 2006; see the main DMTF web site for details, and an update below.
[September 17, 2005] Microsoft and eleven industry partners have submitted the Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification (Version 1, Edition 3) to the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) for "further refinement and finalization as a Web services-based management standard."
Originally published in October 2004 by AMD, Dell, Intel, Microsoft, and Sun, the WS-Management specification has been issued in two new major releases based upon interoperability testing. The co-authors now include Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), BMC Software Inc., Computer Associates, Dell Inc., Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corp., NEC Corp., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Symantec Corp., and WBEM Solutions Inc.
WS-Management is designed to meet four key requirements: (1) "Constrain Web services protocols and formats so Web services can be implemented in management services with a small footprint, in both hardware and software; (2) Define minimum requirements for compliance without constraining richer implementations; (3) Ensure composability with other Web services specifications; (4) Minimize additional mechanism beyond the current Web service architecture."
The WS-Management Web Services specification "addresses the cost and complexity of IT management by providing a common way for systems to access and exchange management information across their entire IT infrastructure. By using Web services to manage IT systems, deployments that support WS-Management will enable IT managers to remotely access devices on their networks, regardless of whether the systems are just out of the box, powered down or otherwise unavailable."
According to the description from Sun Microsystems, the WS-Management specification "identifies a core set of Web service specifications and usage requirements to expose a common set of operations that are central to all systems management, supporting interoperability between management applications and managed resources. The core services provide abilities to: (1) discover the presence of management resources and navigate between them; (2) GET, PUT, CREATE, and DELETE individual management resources, such as settings and dynamic values; (3) enumerate the contents of containers and collections, such as large tables and logs; (4) subscribe to events emitted by managed resources; (5) execute specific management methods with strongly typed input and output parameters."
WS-Management is "agnostic of the format used to describe the management functionality or metadata of logical endpoints or "resources". The WS-Management Catalog specification is a practical starting point for discovering and organizing the management metadata needed by users of the protocol. The entire set of metadata documents available from a WS-Management service is called the catalog. The list of available logical endpoints, their summary forms, compatible actions, schemas, and WSDL representations loosely constitutes the WS-Management Catalog."
Each catalog entry provides "a unique identifier for a real-world resource type, called the ResourceURI. An entry supplies descriptive information so that browsers and other tools can publish available resource names to users and tool authors. It includes keyword and other search information to allow users to do searches over large catalogs. The catalog entry thus defines relationships between catalog entries and the outside world, including external references to help or other documentation on the Web or other locations. This includes references to the appropriate WSDL definitions and XML Schemas for the specific catalog entry."
Web Services for Management (WS-Management). Version 1, Third Edition. June 2005. Edited by Raymond McCollum (Microsoft Corporation). 155 pages. With WS-Management Schema and WS-Management WSDL. Copyright (c) 2004, 2005: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., BMC Software, Inc, Computer Associates,
Dell, Inc., Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, NEC
Corporation, Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems, Inc., Symantec Corporation, and WBEM Solutions, Inc. Authors: Akhil Arora (Sun Microsystems (Inc), Josh Cohen (Microsoft Corporation), Jim Davis (WBEM Solutions (Inc), Mike Dutch (Symantec Corporation), Eugene Golovinsky (BMC Software (Inc), Yasuhiro Hagiwara (NEC Corporation), Jackson He (Intel Corporation), David Hines (Intel Corporation), Reiji Inohara (NEC Corporation), Christane Kämpfe (Fujitsu-Siemens Computers), Raymond McCollum (Microsoft Corporation), Milan Milenkovic (Intel Corporation), Paul Montgomery (Advanced Micro Devices (Inc), Alexander Nosov (Microsoft Corporation), Abhay Padlia (Novell (Inc), Roger Reich (Symantec Corporation), Larry Russon (Novell (Inc), Jeffrey Schlimmer (Microsoft Corporation), Enoch Suen (Dell Inc), Vijay Tewari (Intel Corporation), and Kirk Wilson (Computer Associates).
Acknowledgements [Section 14.0]: This specification has been developed as a result of joint work with many individuals and teams, including: Paul C. Allen (Microsoft), Don Box (Microsoft), Jerry Duke (Intel), David Filani (Intel), Kirill Gavrylyuk (Microsoft), Omri Gazitt (Microsoft), Frank Gorishek (AMD), Lawson Guthrie (Intel), Arvind Kumar (Intel), Vishwa Kumbalimutt (Microsoft), Brad Lovering (Microsoft), Pat Maynard (Intel), Steve Millet (Microsoft), Brian Reistad (Microsoft), Matthew Senft (Microsoft), Tom Slaight (Intel), Marvin Theimer (Microsoft), Dave Tobias (AMD), John Tollefsrud (Sun), Anders Vinberg (Microsoft), and Jerry Xie (Intel). The WS-Management Catalog. Version 1, Third Edition. June 2005. Edited by Raymond McCollum (Microsoft Corporation). 59 pages. With WS-Management Catalog Schema. Copyright (c) 2004, 2005: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc., BMC Software, Inc, Computer Associates, Dell, Inc., Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Intel Corporation, Microsoft Corporation, NEC Corporation, Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems, Inc., Symantec Corporation, and WBEM Solutions, Inc.
Authors: Akhil Arora (Sun Microsystems (Inc), Josh Cohen (Microsoft Corporation), Jim Davis (WBEM Solutions (Inc), Mike Dutch (Symantec Corporation), Eugene Golovinsky (BMC Software (Inc), Yasuhiro Hagiwara (NEC Corporation), Jackson He (Intel Corporation), David Hines (Intel Corporation), Reiji Inohara (NEC Corporation), Christane Kämpfe (Fujitsu-Siemens Computers), Raymond McCollum (Microsoft Corporation), Milan Milenkovic (Intel Corporation), Paul Montgomery (Advanced Micro Devices (Inc), Alexander Nosov (Microsoft Corporation), Abhay Padlia (Novell (Inc), Roger Reich (Symantec Corporation), Larry Russon (Novell (Inc), Jeffrey Schlimmer (Microsoft Corporation), Enoch Suen (Dell Inc), Vijay Tewari (Intel Corporation), Kirk Wilson (Computer Associates).
A development timeline was published for the WS-Management specification by WBEM Solutions Inc., as follows:
- Oct 2004: WS-Management Specification V1 published by AMD, Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Sun
- Dec 2004: WS-Management V1 in Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta 1
- Dec 2004: WS-Management Feedback Workshop hosted by Intel in Santa Clara
- Jan 2005: Intel, Microsoft, Sun interoperability demonstrated at DMTF
- Jan 2005: CIM mapping to WS-Management is published to DMTF
- Mar 2005: at Spring IDF, Intel discusses role of WS-Management in its platforms
- Mar 2005: WS-Management V1 2nd Edition, including WS-Management Catalog published and new co-authors added. V1 2nd Edition specification published: incorporates input from Feedback Workshop that included 16 participating companies; V1 2nd Edition also includes a new spec of WS-Management Catalog which defines the protocols for description and discovery of managed resources.
- Jun 2005: WS-Management V1 3rd Edition, including WS-Management Catalog published and new co-authors added. More new co-authors of the WS-Management specification have been added: Computer Associates, Fujitsu Siemens, NEC, Novell, and Symantec
Excerpt from the announcement of 2005-09-15: "Microsoft and Industry Partners Submit WS-Management Specification. Protocol Allows Interoperability Across Heterogeneous Hardware and Operating System Environments."
Today [September 15, 2005] at Enterprise Management World, Microsoft Corp. announced that it, along with Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), BMC Software Inc., Computer Associates, Dell Inc., Fujitsu-Siemens Computers, Intel Corporation, NEC Corp., Novell Inc., Sun Microsystems Inc., Symantec Corp. and WBEM Solutions Inc., has submitted the Web Services for Management (WS-Management) specification to the Distributed Management Task Force Inc. (DMTF) for further refinement and finalization as a Web services-based management standard. WS-Management provides a common manageability protocol that allows interoperability across heterogeneous hardware and operating system environments. The announcement was also made by Bob Muglia, senior vice president of the Windows Server Division, in his keynote address at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2005 (PDC05) in Los Angeles.
The Web services specification addresses the cost and complexity of IT management by providing a common way for systems to access and exchange management information across their entire IT infrastructure. By using Web services to manage IT systems, deployments that support WS-Management will enable IT managers to remotely access devices on their networks, regardless of whether the systems are just out of the box, powered down or otherwise unavailable.
"The submission of WS-Management to the DMTF marks the first step toward more interoperable, scalable and secure systems management based on a common protocol standard," said Felicity McGourty, director of Marketing at Microsoft. "We look forward to refining the WS-Management specification with the DMTF and the industry to deliver easier-to-implement and cost-effective systems management solutions to our customers."
Industry Partners Broadly Support WS-Management in Solutions
"CA is pleased to work with the co-authors and the DMTF to make WS-Management the standard for applying Web services technologies to desktop management," said Saqib Syed, director of Unicenter product management at Computer Associates (CA). "Web services offers a compelling architecture for unifying management of resources and assets across the enterprise. As the industry leader in enterprise management, CA plans to implement WS-Management support in Unicenter and other management software products so that our customers can take full advantage of Web services."
"WS-Management is the future external interface for Intel Active Management Technologies," said Lorie Wigle, marketing director for the Manageability and Platform Software Division at Intel. "AMT enables out of band remote management capabilities to both PC desktop systems and servers. Working with Intel AMT, WS-Management will provide a common, cost-effective method to manage networked systems."
"Customers want simplicity in all aspects of IT infrastructure management, especially when it comes to managing systems in the data center. WS-Management is a key component in enabling customers to simplify heterogeneous deployment and ultimately lower TCO across the entire data center," said Sohrab Modi, vice president of N1 Systems at Sun Microsystems. "To interoperate with Microsoft and others, Sun will implement the WS-Management protocol in our Sun Fire x64 systems, the Solaris 10 operating system and in our N1 systems management products."
Additional Support for WS-Management
"WS-Management has proven to be scalable to meet the most demanding embedded implementation in our product line," said Swen Anderson, CTO at Peppercon. "Our KIRA 100 ASIC-based solutions stand representatively for Peppercon's complete platform controlling KVM-over-IP product line. It shows WS-Management managing servers in a completely secure manner. Peppercon's business is to deliver embedded remote management products that provide simple, reliable, out-of-band remote access to server environments. We are pleased that WS-Management is available now and will further help reduce IT management costs and complexity, and increase service uptime for our customers."
Microsoft will support WS-Management in Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Beta 1 and in the next release of Microsoft Operations Manager. In March Intel announced the Intel Active Management Technology architecture specification and said iAMT will implement WS-Management in hardware beginning in 2006. In addition, the other co-authors have publicly committed to supporting the specification in their respective products.
WS-Management, originally known as WMX, was first demonstrated at the WinHEC 2004 conference in Seattle. WS-Management has received extensive industry feedback, and the WS-Management version 2 specification was published in March 2005 following numerous feedback and interoperability workshops with implementations beyond those of the 12 co-authors. The co-authors are committed to the development of open industry standards to help drive widespread adoption of WS-Management as the Web services-based management protocol and are looking forward to future collaboration to bring together more cohesive systems management architecture. Sun Microsystems, Intel and Microsoft have announced their plans to deliver products implementing WS-Management.
Web Services for Management (WS-Management). From DMTFDocument number: DSP0226. Date: 2006-04-05. Version: 1.0.0a. Copyright (c) 2006 Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF). By: Akhil Arora (Sun Microsystems Inc.), Josh Cohen (Microsoft Corporation - Chair), Jim Davis (WBEM Solutions Inc.), Mike Dutch (Symantec Corporation), Zulah Eckert (BEA Software), Eugene Golovinsky (BMC Software Inc.), Yasuhiro Hagiwara (NEC Corporation), Jackson He (Intel Corporation), David Hines (Intel Corporation), Reiji Inohara (NEC Corporation), Christane Kdmpfe (Fujitsu-Siemens Computers), Vincent Kowalski (BMC Software Inc.), Vishwa Kumbalimutt (Microsoft Corporation), Richard Landau (Dell Inc.), James Martin (Intel Corporation), Raymond McCollum (Microsoft Corporation - Editor), Milan Milenkovic (Intel Corporation), Paul Montgomery (Advanced Micro Devices Inc.), Bryan Murray (Hewlett-Packard - Editor), Alexander Nosov (Microsoft Corporation), Abhay Padlia (Novell Inc.), Roger Reich (Symantec Corporation), Brian Reistad (Microsoft - Editor), Larry Russon (Novell Inc.), Jeffrey Schlimmer (Microsoft Corporation), Dr. Hemal Shah (Broadcom), Sharon Smith (Intel Corporation), Enoch Suen (Dell Inc.), Vijay Tewari (Intel Corporation), William Vambenepe (Hewlett-Packard), Kirk Wilson (CA Inc.), Dr. Jerry Xie (Intel Corporation). "This specification describes a general SOAP-based protocol for managing systems such as PCs, servers, devices, Web services and other applications, and other manageable entities... The Web services architecture is based on a suite of specifications that define rich functions and that may be composed to meet varied service requirements. A crucial application for these services is in the area of systems management. To promote interoperability between management applications and managed resources, this specification identifies a core set of Web service specifications and usage requirements that expose a common set of operations central to all systems management. This comprises the abilities to: (1) Get, put (update), create, and delete individual resource instances, such as settings and dynamic values; (2) Enumerate the contents of containers and collections, such as large tables and logs; (3) Subscribe to events emitted by managed resources; (4) Execute specific management methods with strongly typed input and output parameters. In each of these areas of scope, this specification defines minimal implementation requirements for conformant Web service implementations. An implementation is free to extend beyond this set of operations, and may also choose not to support one or more areas of functionality listed above if that functionality is not appropriate to the target device or system..." [cache]
"With more than 3,000 active participants, the Distributed Management Task Force, Inc. (DMTF) is the industry organization leading the development of management standards and integration technology for enterprise and Internet environments. DMTF standards provide common management infrastructure components for instrumentation, control and communication in a platform-independent and technology neutral way. DMTF technologies include information models (CIM), communication/control protocols (WBEM), and core management services/utilities....
Two top-level committees, the Technical Committee and the Marketing Committee, oversee the operations of DMTF's working groups. Working groups, comprised of DMTF members with specific areas of expertise, develop the various standards, specifications, and other documents in support of managing enterprise and Internet environments.
The Interoperability Committee supplements the resources of the DMTF such that multi-vendor implementations of our technology can be compatible in the industry. Members interested in joining the Interoperability Committee can learn more and join online..." [from About the DMTF]
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