Practical Service Level Management: Delivering High-Quality Web-Based Services

Summary

This chapter introduced the idea of policy-based management as a means of dealing with demands for service management in a complex environment with tight time constraints. Automating many of the responses and procedures minimizes staff labor, reduces staff mistakes, and provides the speed needed to meet stringent SLA compliance criteria.

Policies serve two main purposes: they define what actions the management system takes in certain situations, and they prohibit other management activities that are irrelevant to a specific problem.

Policy systems have enforcers to determine the appropriate actions to take on service flows. Policies are distributed using push, pull, or hybrid approaches. The push model is very effective for abruptly changing ...