Client/Server Systems Development - Service & Support

Contents:

System Administration
Network Management
Client/Server Systems Development Training

System Administration

We have to ensure that the client/server hardware are to the organizational standards and tested prior to implementation. Softwares should be installed according to standards and works with trained people. This is the first phase of the success of a client/server applications.

Availability

Availability means system, the system availability for processing data and doing its expected work whenever needed. Minicomputer and mainframe data centers provide atleast 99.8 percent availability with today's technology.

To achieve this level of availability, a combination of technological and procedural steps are followed. Most availability failure is due to human error. To reduce this, data centers implement rigid procedures to manage.

Whether the change is hardware, network,system or application software, stringent procedures to request, validate,test and implement the change are defined and adhered. Backout procedures are defined and tested to ensure that if a failure occurs after implementation of the change, the data center can fall back to its previous status.

Technological features such as separate electrical power sources, backup and battery power sources, redundant processors and disk devices all are used to ensure that failure of a single component will not take down the data center.

Data centers use highly skilled professionals in the central location. They are expected to be able to recover the site quickly after any failure.

Reliability

Reliability requires applications to be protected from overwriting each other and requires shared memory to be accessed only by authorized tasks.

Security must be implemented to allow access to resources only by authorized users. The software must automatically handle multiple user contention, provide full recovery after failure of in-flight updates, and provide utility functions to recover a damagedd magnetic disk.

Serviceability

Products based on standard protocols such as the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) provide the necessary feedback of event alerts to support the remote systems management function. It is necessary that the architecture design take into account the issues of standards and products to be serviceable.

Performance

In the centralized minicomputer and mainframe environment, trained technical support personnel and operations staff monitor performance on an ongoing basics. Sophisticated monitoring tools, track the system's day-to-day performance. If trends show performance degrading, systems managers can add hardware or make adjustments to improve performance before it affects the use community. Additional tools are available to simulate new applications before they move into production. This means that the organization learns in advance the resource requirements of new applications. Changes can be made to the operating environment to ensure that performance will be acceptable.

In the client/server environment, neither UNIX, Windows NT, nor OS/2 yet provides these sophisticated performance monitoring tools.

Network Management

Network management involves active and passive monitoring of network resources for the purpose of troubleshooting, detecting potential problems, improving performance, documentation and reporting. A diversity of management applications and protocols are available. The network administrator, working at a management console, produces reports and graphs about the state of the network from this information. Agents may also provide alerts that warn of problems of performance degradations. Most management applications of this type are built around the internet's SNMP.

Desktop management software to remotely manage client systems and control desktops. Software installation, updating and licensing to automatically install or update software over a network and ensure that an organization is within its usage license. Network asset management to track hardware and software inventories. Help desk management to provide user assistance over the network. Network protocol analysis Hub and router management Network design, capacity planning and simulation software.

One of the problems with network management is that most enterprise networks consist of a wide variety of computer platforms, network topologies, communication protocols, operating systems and applications. Therefore, the network itself is often used to extend the reach of the network administrator by single remote monitoring and control tools.

Remote Systems Management

LAN administrator should be able to connect remotely to and then manage the workstation of any user who has problem.

Security

Security is  all about protecting data and data streams. Physical security techniques are fairly straightforward- you lock things up in secure rooms. Software security includes user logon, authentication, authorization and access controls.

Client server systems development training

Client/Server computing provides an opportunity to reengineer the business process by using technology earlier and in a more integrated manner. It does not eliminate the need to train for the new process.

Training advantages of GUI applications 

A major training benefit of the graphical user interface GUI is the opportunity to provide an intuitive interface. Each time standard functions are used in a GUI platform, thhey are invoked in the same way.