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Java Dynamic Management Kit

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Jini Technology and the JAVA DYNAMIC MANAGEMENT KIT Demonstration

Spontaneous Management in the Service Age

Organizations today have to satisfy two diametrically opposed and apparently conflicting demands:

Customers require individual treatment. They demand highly-customized, individually-focused services, tailored to their exact needs, with itemized billing to match.
Customers increasingly want global coverage. They require services to be consistently available 24 hours a day, wherever they happen to be roaming. This means global integration of services, across multiple networks, and via a multitude of heterogeneous devices.

This is the service age, for the customer, the service is more important than the infrastructure that provides it. Today's technology permits the service customization that customers demand, but traditional network management lacks the responsiveness and fine-grained control required. As new technology becomes available, the requirements of customers become achievable.

There is only one way to resolve the paradox of extreme customization combined with ubiquity. Only an efficient, dynamic management solution can provide the spontaneous management that enables service providers to deliver on both these fronts at once.

Management as a Competitive Advantage

Management used to be a necessary evil. But you're losing out if you're continuing to see it in this light. For management has now become a competitive tool. Your management infrastructure is now your greatest potential service differentiator. Commercial success is no longer based on your concrete infrastructure, but on the management system which you use to exploit it.

For example, some successful telecom service providers own no physical infrastructure of their own. Their only capital is an operations support system (OSS) and a business support system (BSS), which enable them to sell client services over a carrier infrastructure which they rent on an as-needed basis. Clearly the size of their margin depends on the effectiveness of their management systems. The more dynamic, efficient and interactive the management systems, the more responsive and cost-effective the services provided. The bottom line is greater market share and greater profit.

Not only management, but specifically dynamic management, is vital to your success in the paradoxical world we have just described. Dynamic management is required in order to implement new services and commercialize them instantly, based on individual user profiles. It is essential to rapid, cost-effective integration of the new technology that will increasingly be available, and necessary to the networks of tomorrow.

No one has end-to-end control of the network anymore. Devices, applications, services and other resources get added every day. Jini technology enables dynamic discovery and control of these in real-time. Equally dynamic management is required to subsequently integrate these resources and exploit them to maximum effect.

Jini Technology-Based Networks

A system based on Jini technology is a distributed system based on the idea of creating federations of users and the services and resources that they require. The Jini technology-based system extends the Java™ application environment from a single virtual machine to a network of machines. The Java application environment provides a good computing platform for distributed computing because both code and data can move from machine to machine. The environment has built-in security that allows the confidence to run code downloaded from another machine. Strong typing in the Java application environment enables identifying the class of an object to be run on a virtual machine even when the object did not originate on that machine. The result is a system in which the network supports a fluid configuration of objects which can move from place to place as needed and can call any part of the network to perform operations. The Jini technology-based system federates computers and computing devices into what appears to the user as a single system.

Services

The most important concept within the Jini network architecture is that of a service. A service is an entity that can be used by a person, a program, or another service. A service may be a computation, storage, a communication channel to another user, a software filter, a hardware device, or another user.

Members of a Jini technology-based system federate in order to share access to services. Services may make use of other services, and a client of one service may itself be a service with clients of its own. The dynamic nature of Jini technology enables services to be added or withdrawn from a federation at any time according to demand, need, or the changing requirements of the workgroup using it.

Operation

The Jini technology infrastructure provides mechanisms for devices, services, and users to join and detach from a network. Joining into and leaving a Jini technology-based system is an easy and natural, often automatic, occurrence. Systems built on Jini technology are far more dynamic than is currently possible in networked groups where configuring a network is a centralized function done by hand.

Services are found and resolved by a lookup server. The lookup server is the central bootstrapping mechanism for the system and provides the major point of contact between the system and users of the system.

A service is added to a lookup service by a pair of protocols called discovery and join. First the service locates an appropriate lookup server, using the discovery protocol, and then it joins it using the join protocol.

When a service joins a lookup server, a service object for that service is loaded into the lookup server. The service object contains the Java programming language interface for the service including the methods that users and applications will invoke to execute the service, along with any other descriptive attributes.

The client interacts with a service via a set of interfaces written in the Java programming language. These interfaces define the set of methods that can be used to interact with the service. Programmatic interfaces are identified by the type system of the Java programming language, and services can be found in a lookup service by asking for those that support a particular interface. Finding a service this way ensures that the program looking for the service will know how to use that service, because that use is defined by the set of methods that are defined by the type.

A user interface can also be stored in the lookup service as an attribute of a registered service. A user interface stored in the lookup server by a Jini technology-based service is an implementation that allows the service to be directly manipulated by a user of the system.

Managing Jini Technology-Based Networks

A network that is based on Jini technology functions as a complete system which provides transparent services to users. In order to function as a transparent whole, the Jini technology-based network needs to be managed by an equally flexible, responsive management technology that is designed to discover new resources immediately and add them to the management base within seconds.

For this to be feasible, the Jini management technology has to be universal, capable of managing virtually anything on the network. It must apply across industries, able to function equally well in the consumer domain, in the enterprise, and in the domain of telecommunications/datacommunications.

The Jini management technology must apply to all computing environments and managed resources. It must appear to be the same for everybody, wherever they are and whatever they're managing.

As well as universality, some other requirements are clear. A Jini management technology must be simple, and flexible enough to address smart-card or mobile phone management. It has to offer secure, spontaneous, dynamically extensible services.

And it has to interoperate with existing management systems and classical management architectures, whether they be based on SNMP, CMIP, or the web.

Sun Products

The Sun technologies discussed in this presentation are already being sold by Sun. Jini management technology is no exception. The products needed to provide management for Sun's Jini technology are available today.

The Java Dynamic Management™ Kit

The Java Dynamic Management Kit has been shipping for the past 18 months. It provides a "telco class" management framework that is protocol-independent and information model-independent. It contains a management plug-in for Jini technology, and it bridges between Jini technology and already-existing management solutions such as SNMP or web-based management systems.

The Java Dynamic Management Kit is the industry's first Java technology-based solution for building and distributing network management intelligence into system, application and network devices. The technology of the Java Dynamic Management Kit is based on smart, distributed Java platform agents that can be built into any device. The agents act as invisible "assistants" alerting you to potential problems throughout the network or fixing them on their own. Based on the JavaBeans™ component architecture specification, both agents and management services can be updated and enhanced on-the-fly, and deployed immediately using the Java Dynamic Management Kit's push/pull distribution mechanism. This technology offers the flexibility required for management in a Jini technology-based environment.

For more information on the Java Dynamic Management Kit, see
http://www.sun.com/software/java-dynamic.

Complete Management Solutions

With Jini technology and the Java Dynamic Management Kit, management processing is no longer, hard coded and managed-resource-dependent; it is dynamically extensible, and can include new management services as these become available. Furthermore, integration within existing management solutions is easy.

Sun delivers management middleware which forms the foundation for development of complete management solutions.

The products and technologies described in this document are innovational, in fact we believe they will provide the basis for the global networking in the early part of the next century. And yet these technologies also integrate easily into existing management environments.

The great advantage of these technologies is that they can be implemented progressively throughout your network infrastructure, and managed by your existing management solution. They interoperate with existing platforms and systems.

For example, Jini technology and the Java Dynamic Management Kit can be used to create a solution which can be managed by the industry-leading professional system- and network-management platforms provided by Bull OpenMaster, Computer Associates Unicenter TNG®, and Sun's Solstice Enterprise Manager™ software have already been rapidly integrated. Such products are called network management platforms in the remainder of this document.

Deployment Examples

In the examples described below, various Jini technology-enabled devices and their associated services are deployed and managed through a kit-based management infrastructure based on the Java Dynamic Management Kit. This Java Dynamic Management Kit-based infrastructure is in turn linked to the existing network management platform, which manages the entire network. Network management platforms provide topology management, configuration management, and alarm management, and so forth. They perform monitoring functions, and interface with accounting and billing systems.

No device-specific software is required on the network management platform: everything is discovered and downloaded from the network infrastructure itself, through Jini technology and via the Java Dynamic Management Kit.

An Example Jini Technology-Based Network

The figure below shows a network based on Jini technology with a number of Jini technology-enabled devices connected to it. The residential gateway might be a cable modem, the camera could be a security camera installed in premises for surveillance. The printer and the PC are standard home/office equipment.

Figure 1: Directory of Services

The Jini technology-based browser provides the user with a directory of Jini technology-enabled services. These are the services provided by the Jini technology-enabled devices connected to the network. For example, the printer could provide black and white printing, color printing, recto verso printing, etc. All these services are displayed on the Jini technology-based browser.

The directory of enabled services is automatically updated as soon as new Jini technology-enabled resources are connected to the network or are disconnected. When a new enabled resource connects to the network, it multicasts a discovery message to find an appropriate lookup server. The resource then loads a service object into the lookup server and then the resource is available to clients on the Jini technology-based network.

A user who wishes to use one of the services listed, simply clicks on the device in the Jini technology-enabled directory. The necessary interfaces and drivers are downloaded directly from the Jini resource and installed on the user's client device. Thereafter the client can interact with the Jini technology-enabled resource directly.

Adding Management to the Network Based on Jini Technology

When we add management to the Jini technology-based network, administration becomes easier. Jini technology-based management performs the following tasks, which previously were performed manually by system administration engineers:

Figure 2: Adding Manageability

Resources are automatically discovered, as soon as they are connected to the network. Instantly every other resource on the network knows they are there, and what services they provide. This information is provided by the Jini lookup server, and communicated through the Java Dynamic Management Kit agent.
As well as discovering user services, Jini technology-based management also discovers the management properties of the Jini technology-enabled resource.
Management applications or applets are uploaded from the Jini technology-enabled resource and installed on the administration console, in the same way that drivers and interfaces needed for using the Jini technology-enabled resource are uploaded as needed to client devices.

Note - Dynamic management based on the Java Dynamic Management Kit enables new and updated user or management applications (such as new printer drivers, or new monitoring services) to be sent directly from the resource vendor to the network management platform as soon as these become available.

Another way of looking at the scenario shown here is that Jini technology provides a lookup server for properties that are then combined by the Java Dynamic Management Kit with its management services to achieve a spontaneous management solution.

Management Interfaces

The Java Dynamic Management Kit is protocol and information-model independent. It provides a wide range of management interfaces, such as: HTML, HTTP, HTTPS, XML, RMI, SNMP, IIOP, CMIP, etc. Proprietary interfaces can be developed and added dynamically.

These management interfaces, and the capacity for extension to support proprietary interfaces as needed, ensure that Jini technology management can be integrated into virtually any existing management system.

For example, a simple web browser can be used to access the Java Dynamic Management Kit agent, and view or modify management data in it. Java technology-based management applications can also be used to manage the Jini technology-based network. And using SNMP, Jini technology-enabled resources can be managed seamlessly through advanced enterprise administration and network management systems.

Figure 3: Three Management Interfaces

The figure above shows how three interfaces can be used to manage the Jini technology-based network:

Management via a web interface through a web browser
Management via an RMI interface via a network management platform with Jini technology management services
Management via an SNMP interface using a network management platform with SNMP management.

In each case the Jini technology-enabled devices appear on the management screen in real-time, as they are discovered, following connection to the network.

In cases where the Jini technology-enabled resource has its own management application, this interface to this application appears in a popup window on the network management platform. No device-specific software needs to be installed on the network management platform prior to the connection of the Jini technology-enabled device: the management application is uploaded to the platform in real time.

Example Scenario 1: Managing a Printer

This example shows how the alarms are forwarded from the Jini technology-enabled resource to the network management platform, and what actions are taken.

Figure 4: A Printer Management Scenario

The printer is connected to the network. It is discovered and automatically appears on the map on the network management platform, through Jini technology and the Java Dynamic Management Kit.
The system administrator accesses the Jini technology-based lookup server directory to recover the management application from the printer. This is displayed as a pop-up window on the network management platform.
A problem arises, and a corresponding alarm generated. For example, "job too big".
The job is cancelled from the network management platform, via the pop-up printer management application, and the owner warned of the cancellation.

Statistics on printer usage and corresponding accounting information can also be displayed on the network management platform.

Example Scenario 2: Managing an NT Server

Figure 5: A Server Management Scenario

The system administrator discovers the NT server BIOS as the NT server is booted, and adds it to the map on the network management platform, through the Jini technology-based lookup service.
The NT server crashes. A corresponding alarm is generated to the network management platform.
The system administrator accesses the Jini technology-based lookup service directory to recover the management application from the NT server. This is displayed as a pop-up window on the network management platform.
A patch is downloaded to the NT server, using the management application. The NT server is rebooted, using the management application.

When the NT server is up and running, a cancellation alarm appears on the network management platform.

Conclusion

The example scenarios and demonstrations have all been implemented without modification of any existing product. These solutions can be applied today, using existing, commercially available products. They demonstrate the simple availability of spontaneous management, achieved through Jini technology and the Java Dynamic Management Kit.