Distribution Models for Network Management Functions

To ensure scalability, efficiency and flexibility of network and systems management platforms of today’s growing networks, distributed management systems are strongly required. A quite commonly proposed simple taxonomy suggests a distinction between centralized, weakly distributed, strongly distributed and cooperative management distribution models. However, it is not yet clearly stated which distribution models are best suited for certain categories of management problems. This article presents a number of criteria of given management problems. Multiple combinations of these criteria lead to some reasonable characteristics of management systems that are suitable to solve the management problem. In turn, typical combinations of these characteristics make up the four aforementioned management distribution models. 1 Distributed Management The early network management approaches at the end of the 1980s were based on a strictly centralized architecture consisting of a central network management station and a number of agents supplying the management information. However, the demand for enhanced management systems is growing regarding to their flexibility, robustness, efficiency and scalability: the size and bandwidth of managed networks is increasing constantly, along with the heterogeneity of systems, network technologies, and services. Meanwhile, the computational power of managed systems increases significantly. These facts are generally addressed by the concepts of distributed management. It is based on the delegation of management tasks to dual-role entities that are called mid-level managers, so that the network bandwidth can be reduced and the need for CPU power and storage requirements can be distributed among these mid-level managers. Furthermore, robustness can be increased through the use of redundancy, and flexibility can be improved by dynamic delegation of code and even processes [1].