DMTF, a global IT industry body that works in the areas of development, validation and infrastructure management standards promotion has announced its Network Management Initiative (NETMAN) that will lead the industry toward the unification of network management across traditional, cloud and software defined data centre (SDDC) environments.
While cloud, virtualization and software defined networking have eased the use of network functions for consumers, the challenges of deploying and managing the network supporting these infrastructures have magnified.
Addressing the current complexity and abstraction, DMTF’s NETMAN will provide the necessary standards-based management models and interfaces to enable consistent, unified and automated provisioning, deployment, configuration and monitoring of network environments.
The DMTF also believes that NETMAN could significantly benefit other related efforts such as the Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) initiative (www.etsi.org/nfv).
Today’s existing and emerging network management standards do not attempt to integrate with server, virtualization and cloud management standards to simplify and unify the management of the overall infrastructure. Building upon the DMTF’s widely-deployed management standards, NETMAN is in the unique position to:
• Facilitate interoperable management across multiple network environments
• Enable a common management infrastructure for network resources and services that can span across multiple implementations, including open source solutions
• Deliver effective management of the network environment within new paradigms such as SDDC and NFV
“Multiple open source, proprietary and isolated management solutions for networks currently exist, but the lack of cohesion often increases the complexity and cost of development, rather than ease these burdens,” said Winston Bumpus, Chairman of the Board, DMTF.
“The DMTF’s NETMAN takes a holistic approach, using standard management interfaces, to facilitate interoperability. The result is integrated management in today’s real-world, heterogeneous network environments,” added Bumpus.
Industry Support for the DMTF Network Management Initiative
“As a leader in connectivity solutions, Broadcom is proud to support the DMTF’s Network Management Initiative, which provides standards based management models and interfaces for networking environments,” said Ed Redmond, Vice President and GM,Compute and Connectivity Group – Broadcom.
“Network environments continue to scale in multiple directions; size, speeds, feature richness and heterogeneity. It has never been more important to have a consistent, cohesive and‘open management infrastructure for all network resources and services,” added Redmond.
“As the medium that is rapidly connecting all people and all things, the network’s critical role in modern systems is paramount,” said Yoshiki Matsuda, Vice President – IT Platform R & D Management Division, Hitachi Ltd.
“Hitachi is encouraged to see that the DMTF is expanding its scope to encompass the sphere of network management. DMTF management standards are the ties that bind devices to management platforms. Extending those platforms to encompass the network is the next logical and necessary step,” added Matsuda.