1. Dell Management Infrastructure <tag /> < innovation />
Mark Cathcart, Director of Systems Engineering, Dell
26th August, 2009, v0.9
http://cathcam.wordpress.com
2. 2
• Not judgmental, or critical, (often) exactly what
was needed at the time.
• Typically occurs overtime; Starts with no long
term plan; Reactive rather than proactive
• Silo’d implementations; always find a way to add
function
• Expensive, (often) throw away code; expensive to
develop; expensive to test; expensive to sustain
• In order to grow software sustainably, Dell needs
an Intentional Architecture
Accidental architecture
3. Accidental architecture
• “Every interesting software-intensive system has an architecture. While
some of these architectures are intentional, most appear to be accidental.”
• “An intentional architecture is explicitly identified and then implemented; “
• “An accidental architecture emerges from the multitude of individual design
decisions that occur during development”
• “An accidental architecture is not necessarily a bad thing, as long as the
decisions that make up that architecture are made manifest(*) “
– Essential ones are made visible as soon as they are instituted
– Allowed to remain visible throughout the meaningful life of that system.
• “Accidental architectures are not evil things; “
– they are inevitable in the growth of systems.
– It's only when we begin to turn these accidental architectures into intentional ones that we
advance our understanding of software architecture.
Grady Booch, Founder Rational Software, IBM Fellow - 2006
*A public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature
3
4. Introduction
• Myers-Briggs type INTP
– Introversion, iNtuition, Thinking, Perception
• What to expect?
– Enjoys spending long periods of time on own
– Working through problems and forming solutions
– Impatient with bureaucracy, rigid hierarchies
– Prefers to work with others as equals
• How?
– Understand topic by articulating principles
– Demonstrate remarkable skill by explaining complex ideas
to others in simple terms, esp. in writing
– May seem oblivious, aloof or even rebellious
• In fact listening and understanding…
– Quick wit, esp. with language; defuse tension through
comical observation and reference
4
5. What if…. (Dell)
• We had a simple, single, consistent set of interfaces which could be
adapted across numerous server generations?
• Had common, comprehensive standards for interfacing to and
integrating with our products
• That could evolve in a platform neutral, OS and product independent
way?
• That minimized development, test, sustaining costs by using shared
services and interfaces?
• That allowed us to add new features with a minimum of infrastructure
work?
• Yet still allowed Dell to gain more control, more Intellectual Property
and profit from it’s management infrastructure ?
6. What if…. (customer)
• You could configure all servers, storage, networking equipment at order and install
time based on the workloads you want to run?
• You had access to all of the certified configuration information and could easily
associate that with your infrastructure from any server?
• Health, faults, and alerts were delivered to you anywhere you would like with RSS?
• A chronological log of information of all changes in the infrastructure was available
anywhere?
• Patches and software updates were delivered to you asynchronously as they became
available?
• You had a management infrastructure that was common across and between your
infrastructure, and independent of implementation
• You could quickly and easily build management views to provide a simplified view
across different services you provide using industry standards tools and open API’s…
