Figuring out the cause of an IT failure is more complex than the problem itself

NETWORK WORLD NEWSLETTER: MIKE KARP ON STORAGE IN THE ENTERPRISE
09/06/05
Today's focus: Figuring out the cause of an IT failure is more
complex than the problem itself

Dear networking.world@gmail.com,

In this issue:

* Getting snowed under by a blizzard of failure alerts
* Links related to Storage in the Enterprise
* Featured reader resource
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Ciena
Network World Executive Guide: Compliance can be an opportunity
for Network Improvements

Federal regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are driving
increased corporate spending on key IT areas such as security,
authentication, access control and document management. Get
advice from experts. Read about real-world tactics. Learn about
the dark side of compliance: what happens when thing wrong. And,
how mandates are affecting IT budgets.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=112837
_______________________________________________________________
GAMBLING FORCES THE QUESTION: WHO CONTROLS THE 'NET?

A pair of Caribbean islands with a combined area about 2.5 times
that of Washington, D.C., and a population of about 68,000,
decided a while back to invest in Internet casinos as a way to
augment the tourist trade. Can the U.S. government prohibit U.S.
residents from partaking? Click here:
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=112411
_______________________________________________________________

Today's focus: Figuring out the cause of an IT failure is more
complex than the problem itself

By Mike Karp

Solving problems in complex IT environments is a time-consuming,
people-intensive operation. In fact, most IT organizations do a
very poor job when it comes to identifying and resolving such
issues as why an IT or business process fails.

And yet fail they do. And at some sites, they fail far too
frequently for anybody's liking. Just about every site has some
sort of alerting system associated with applications or IT
processes that send out a distress call when a process fails.
The sad truth is that most such systems contribute very little
to solving the problem, and in fact in some cases they may even
contribute to making the situation worse. Here's why:

Typically when a failure occurs the support team gets snowed
under by a "blizzard" of alerts. This blizzard however, does not
give much guidance as to the source of the fault because in
almost all cases the information the alert supplies is simply a
listing of symptoms. Unfortunately, this list of symptoms is
accompanied by zero indication of what has caused them.

In a moderately complex IT infrastructure, many parts of the
overall system may be affected by a single fault and each, when
it encounters a problem, spawns an alert. In a moderately large
shop, it is not unusual for a single problem to generate
hundreds of alerts, each describing a symptom but none, alas
identifying the problem itself or showing at which point along
the data path the problem had taken place.

In such cases, all the support team knows is that a fault has
occurred and a process (or perhaps a great number of processes)
has ended prior to completion. It is at this point that the
various subject matter experts go out and examine almost every
issue described in an alert. Eventually, they usually do find
the trouble, but at what cost? Let's consider a bit of what is
involved.

Repairing a problem often occupies numerous technical personnel
who likely as not will first turn to topology maps, Visio
diagrams, or Excel spreadsheets. As none of these is capable of
being updated in real time, they frequently find themselves
referring to outdated documents. This is of course an even
greater problem when what is being managed is systems spread out
over a wide area.

How do you economically dispatch personnel to go out to
physically examine the potential problem points? The answer of
course is that you don't. Such an approach is clearly a time
consuming and an inefficient use of staff and other resources.

Worse yet, while the problem is waiting to be identified and
solved, the IT team typically has no way to understand which
business processes are being hit. This quite naturally tends to
strain relations between IT managers and their peers on the
business side of the house. Lacking knowledge of what is going
on, IT management can't inform line of business managers how
long their revenue systems may be down. Service level
agreements (SLAs) are violated, a fire drill ensues, and the
corporate ship is not a happy one.

The most appealing answer, quite candidly, is to retire to a
beach house in the Caribbean. As for those of us who can't do
this (shame on all of us for having lacked the foresight to be
born independently wealthy), well we really should pay greater
attention when someone eventually does come up with a tool that
provides root cause analysis of our problems.

The top 5: Today's most-read stories

1. VoIP rollouts generate heat, power concerns
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6298>

2. Cell carriers tackle Katrina damage
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6408>

3. 2005 salary survey
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage4039nlstoragealert6020>

4. Google dives deeper into networking
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6106>

5. Katrina news <http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6409>

Today's most-forwarded story:

Cell carriers tackle Katrina damage
<http://www.networkworld.com/nlstorage6410>

_______________________________________________________________
To contact: Mike Karp

Mike Karp is senior analyst with Enterprise Management
Associates, focusing on storage, storage management and the
methodology that brings these issues into the marketplace. He
has spent more than 20 years in storage, systems management and
telecommunications. Mike can be reached via e-mail
<mailto:mkarp@enterprisemanagement.com>.
_______________________________________________________________
This newsletter is sponsored by Ciena
Network World Executive Guide: Compliance can be an opportunity
for Network Improvements

Federal regulations such as the Health Insurance Portability and
Accountability Act and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are driving
increased corporate spending on key IT areas such as security,
authentication, access control and document management. Get
advice from experts. Read about real-world tactics. Learn about
the dark side of compliance: what happens when thing wrong. And,
how mandates are affecting IT budgets.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=112836
_______________________________________________________________
ARCHIVE LINKS

Archive of the Storage newsletter:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/stor/index.html

Breaking storage news and analysis:
http://www.networkworld.com/topics/storage.html
_______________________________________________________________
Bottom line: Loss of network availability is unacceptable in
today's business world.

The perpetual and escalating struggle for IT managers to protect
your enterprise from worms and other attacks just got easier
with an endpoint security solution that's easy to deploy and
manage, simple to use, minimal user impact, real-time monitoring
and notification, flexible reporting and low total cost of
ownership.
http://www.fattail.com/redir/redirect.asp?CID=112530
_______________________________________________________________
FEATURED READER RESOURCE
VoIP

For the latest in VoIP, check out NW's Research Center on this
very topic. Here you will find a collection of the latest news,
reviews, product testing results and more all related to keeping
VoIP networks performing at their best. Click here for more:
<http://www.networkworld.com/topics/voip.html>
_______________________________________________________________
May We Send You a Free Print Subscription?
You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered
at your fingertips each day. Now, extend your knowledge by
receiving 51 FREE issues to our print publication. Apply
today at http://www.subscribenw.com/nl2

International subscribers click here :
http://nww1.com/go/circ_promo.html
_______________________________________________________________
SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES

To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World e-mail
newsletters, go to:
<http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/Changes.aspx>

To change your e-mail address, go to:
<http://www.nwwsubscribe.com/ChangeMail.aspx>

Subscription questions? Contact Customer Service by replying to
this message.

This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com
Please use this address when modifying your subscription.
_______________________________________________________________

Have editorial comments? Write Jeff Caruso, Newsletter Editor,
at: <mailto:jcaruso@nww.com>

Inquiries to: NL Customer Service, Network World, Inc., 118
Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772

For advertising information, write Kevin Normandeau, V.P. of
Online Development, at: <mailto:sponsorships@nwfusion.com>

Copyright Network World, Inc., 2005