Archives for: November, 2009

Network Management – The Art of Enterprise Monitoring

“That which is not monitored is not managed.” – A wise System Administrator

Failure is a part of life. This is especially true in the world of IT. It is not a question of if, but when. The key to successful enterprise management is to know when things fail. This can only be accomplished through monitoring. The name of this art – Network Management. Well, actually it is more than network management, but I guess this is the title it gets because of its roots; kind of like the way we still say we are dialing the phone.  A better name would be – Enterprise Management, which is starting to catch on, but the old IT folks won’t understand what you are talking about.

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Happy Thanksgiving From Navstar

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Gov 2.0 Takes Two Steps Forward and One Step Back

I started following the saga of the missing blog via Diplopundit, so I’ll link to her post Best Consular Blog. Dead, So Very Dead calling the case closed. I’m reposting a lot of it below.

The consular blog “The Consuls’ Files,” by Madam le Consul went missing from the blogosphere 30 days ago today. By missing, I mean just gone. Disappeared. Like it had never been. The only place it exists now is in piecemeal RSS feeds scattered among its subscribers, and one copy of the cached file, grabbed quickly by another blogger before whoever removed the blog eradicated that also.

If you go missing for more than 48 hours in real life, the chances of finding you drop precipitously. The chances of recovery in virtual disappearances, um don’t really know. But she’s gone. Missing for over 700 hours now. The trail is cold. Most likely dead. Just dead. And we can understand if she wants to stay dead for now.

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What is Enterprise Architecture?

I typically try to avoid “buzz” terms like Enterprise Architecture, but sometimes you just need a term. This is one such case. It is either use a term, or paragraphs of explanations. This is intended to be the paragraphs to define the term, Enterprise Architecture.

The term Enterprise Architecture (EA) is not well defined. A quick look at Wikipedia makes this fact more than evident. There are several competing interpretations of EA. But all of these interpretations have a common element – The structure of components to address the needs of a larger system. Typically in these definitions the larger system is the business goals or processes. However, for the IT staff, business goals are not really the system they consider. And if they say that it is, look for their ITIL coffee cup and it will probably be full of ITIL Kool-Aid. No, for the IT folks, Enterprise Architecture is all about services and systems.

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