A framework for distributed management with mobile components

The increasing importance of networks and the growing numbers of devices an d services that run on them necessitate effective network and systems manag ement. The traditional centralized management paradigm alone is no longer s ufficient for effective management solutions, primarily as it does not scal e well. Distribution of management tasks is a promising approach. The distr ibuted management framework (DMF) presented in this paper provides an envir onment that allows a broad range of management tasks to move and run anywhe re within the managed system. In our approach, management tasks are lightwe ight applications that can be configured and downloaded dynamically as requ ired, reducing the load on managed resources and simplifying the problem of management software updates. We present an object-oriented, Java-based imp lementation of the DMF and describe applications developed on this platform . (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.