Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
Unit IV
Client/Server Systems Development
Service and Support
Executive Summary
Users of mainframe-based applications may grumble about costs, response time, inflexibility, lack of user friendliness, bureaucracy, and their particular piques in a specific environment. One thing they should not complain about is data loss. Mainframe users expect that when a host transaction completes, the data is reliably stored. Any subsequent application, system, hardware, or power failure will not cause data loss. In some sites a fire, flood, hurricane, or other natural disaster will cause minimal or no data loss.
Personal computer users historically have had different expectations. In the past, if after an hour working on a spreadsheet the system hangs up, power fails, or a virus reboots the machine, users certainly feel annoyed but not really surprised.
Likewise, even with companies that have moved beyond single-user PC applications and have embraced networking, users historically have been more tolerant of less rigorous standards. For example, Forester Research projects that the costs to manage distributed networks of PCs and servers will be 10 to 30 percent more than to manage minicomputers and mainframes. Other studies have claimed costs are double. This higher cost is the case when LANs evolve and applications are built without an architectural view and without appropriate standards to support the design.
With the movement to client/server computing, demand for mainframe-like performance from client/server architectures increases. If firms are going to move the business of the corporation into the client/server world, mainframe-like expectations will prevail and mainframe-like support must be provided.
Recent experience with remotely-managed LAN applications is demonstrating that costs are equal to or less than costs for traditional mainframe applications. Effective remote management requires systems and application architectures that anticipate the requirement for remote management.
Systems Administration
Like many things in life, the principle of "do it right the first time" applies to the long-term success of your client/server application. Thus, it is important to ensure that client/server hardware is specified and assembled according to organizational standards and tested prior to
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
implementation. Software should be loaded by trained staff and tested to ensure that it is installed according to standards and works as expected. The largest number of user problems are caused by incorrect installation and equipment that is faulty at installation. Most LAN administration problems can be prevented by proper architecture supported by trained installers.
Availability
Availability means system uptime—or the capability of the system to be available for processing information and doing its expected work whenever called on. Minicomputer and mainframe data centers should provide at least 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 today is caused by human error. To minimize this, data centers implement rigid procedures to manage change.
Whether the change is hardware, network, system, or application software, stringent procedures to request, validate, test, and implement the change are defined and adhered to. 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 diesel generator and battery power sources, redundant processors, and magnetic disk devices all are used to ensure that failure of a single component will not take down the data center. Very critical systems use fault-tolerant processors from vendors such as Tandem and Stratus to ensure that availability approaches 100 percent.
Data centers use highly skilled professionals in the central location. They are expected to be able to recover the site quickly after any failure. Vendor service contracts are used to guarantee that repair can be accomplished in one, four, or eight hours as necessary.
Client/server applications must be able to provide the appropriate level of availability demanded by the business need. Certain features, such as redundant power supplies and battery backup, are relatively easy to provide. In large cities, vendor service-level agreements can be purchased to ensure that failures can be repaired quickly. In smaller cities, repair by replacement will be necessary if the required service levels cannot be provided because of the travel time.
The provision of highly qualified technical staff at each site is sometimes physically and rarely economically feasible. Remote LAN management is the only way to make effective use of scarce resources. Remote management requires a central site connected through WAN services to each LAN. Network management service levels are defined through reasonability levels. This enables comparative interrogation of the availability of individual devices, of performance, and even of server magnetic disk space use.
Products such as Openvison, Sun Connect, HP Openview, IBM's NetView and SystemView can be integrated through industry-standard network management protocols to provide the desired level of availability for reasonable cost. The OSF has defined a standard Distributed Management Environment (DME) for management of its Distributed Computing Environments (DCE) standard, which is evolving as the definition for an object technology based management platform. Although this technology is less mature than the DCE standard,
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
experienced systems from integrators are demonstrating effective remote systems management network operations centers.
Reliability
All current technology minicomputer and mainframe operating systems provide basic services to support system reliability. Reliability first requires availability factors to be resolved. 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. Database management software must ensure that either the entire set of updates requested by a unit-of-work be completed or that none be completed. Specifically, the software must automatically handle multiple user contention, provide full recovery after failure of in-flight updates, and provide utility functions to recover a damaged magnetic disk.
Serviceability
Most minicomputer and mainframe operating systems and hardware provide diagnostic services that pinpoint the location of failures.Transient errors are noted so that preventive maintenance can correct problems before they affect availability. The central location of the equipment allows trained technicians to institute regular preventive maintenance programs. For this reason, many organizations install their first servers in the glass room until they have more experience with remote LAN management.
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.
Software Distribution
The centralized minicomputer and mainframe environment shares executable software from a single library. Software maintenance and enhancement are accomplished by changes to a single location. In the distributed client/server model, executable software is resident on servers located throughout the organization. Changes to system and application software must be replicated across the organization. This presents a tremendous complication in serviceability of these applications.
An additional complexity is incurred in the UNIX world when several different hardware platforms are used. Despite the fact that the source level of the software is compatible across the various platforms, the executable binary form of the software is not compatible. An HP 9000 and an IBM RS 6000 may run the same application and use the same Ingres Windows 4GL development software, but the same generated applications cannot be distributed to each location.
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
The executable libraries must be created on a machine with the same physical hardware. This causes serious problems for distribution of software throughout a large network of disparate computer platforms. Testing should also be done on each platform before changes are distributed. Most organizations have addressed this requirement by installing one of each of the hardware platforms from the field in a central support location.
The solution to this problem is a properly designed client/server architecture supported by effective software management tools. This problem is certainly solvable but only through design and planning. It will not be solved in an ad hoc fashion after implementation.
There are special requirements in supporting distributed technology. An advantage of the personal computer is that it is easy to modify. This is of course a disadvantage for production environments. Remote support personnel must be able to discover the hardware and software configuration of the remote technology. With this discovery they can determine which software versions to send and provide educated support for problems.
Performance
In the centralized minicomputer and mainframe environment, trained technical support personnel and operations staff monitor performance on an ongoing basis. Sophisticated monitoring tools, such as Candle Corporation's Omegamon MVS, and analysis tools, such as RMF from IBM, track the system's day-to-day performance. IBM and Digital Equipment Corporation include features in their large computers' operating systems that provide considerable dynamic tuning capabilities. If trends show performance degrading, systems managers can add hardware or make adjustments to improve performance before it affects the user community.
Additional tools, such as Crystal from BBN and TPNS from IBM, 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. Certain tools, such as Network General's Sniffer, are available to remotely monitor the LAN traffic. UNIX, Windows NT and OS/2 provide limited capabilities to define task priorities. Many vendors are now marketing products to support this need. At present, though, the design expertise of enterprise architects is essential to avoid performance shortcomings. Fortunately the cost of hardware for client workstations or Windows NT, OS/2, and UNIX servers is such that adding extra capacity to improve performance is usually not a major cost factor for a client/server system.
Network Management
Network management tools such as those from OpenVision, IBM's NetView, AT&T's UNMA, and Digital Equipment Corporation's EMA products, to name a few, all provide a level of remote monitoring that can track response time and network loading. None of these products provides the type of analysis of the remote server that RMF provides or the tuning tools that are provided within MVS and VMS. Products such as ESRA from Elegant Computing, are available to do remote analysis of UNIX servers in order to monitor disk
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
usage, error logs, and user profiles. This product is used extensively to manage remote UNIX servers.
Other products, such as Microcoms LANlord, provide significant capabilities for remote access to Windows and OS/2 PC LAN desktops. It is impossible to provide adequate support for distributed client/server applications without the capability to support the desktop and the server remotely. This is an area of intense focus by the industry, and during 1993, a number of major systems integrators implemented NOS to provide desktop support for Novell, LAN Manager, LAN Server, and NFS client/server environments. During 1994, this capability will become essential to all organizations.
Help Desk
The most efficient and effective way to provide support to client/server users is through the use of the help desk. A help desk is a set of systems and procedures used by technical and applications staff to provide support to end-users in areas ranging from basic how to do and problem determination to advanced troubleshooting and diagnosis. This type of support may be provided using remote PCs, voice-only assistance over the telephone, or in-person assistance via an on-site help request. This provides immediate feedback for simple problems and an early and complete audit trail of problems. Proper follow-up is essential to provide users with confidence in the help desk function.
A professional help desk is one of the keys to successful implementation of the client/server model. Remote users require immediate access to assistance. Effective implementation of a client/server application depends on the availability of immediate support when problems occur.
Experience with distributed client/server implementations demonstrates that successful implementation requires that 80 percent of problems be solved while the user is on the phone. A further 10 percent must be solved within an hour of the call. The remainder should be resolved or a workaround found within 24 hours.
Users familiar with PC software expect ease of use and intuitive navigation and recovery in their software. If a client/server application lacks these features internally, it is critical for a help desk to be available at the first sign of trouble. The help desk support personnel must take over control of the client workstation in order to assess the situation well. This process called over the shoulder helps enable the remote help desk to work as if they were working over the shoulder of the user. The help desk is able to see the screen, execute software on the user workstation, review local data files and make software changes as necessary. Centralized help desks must identify and track problems and then ensure that corrective action is provided to the user as soon as possible. They are the lifeline that explains discovered problems and ways to work around them.
Help desk personnel must be able to identify with the frustration of a user working remotely from any personal support. They must be sympathetic and clear in their explanation of solutions.
The help desk must provide one-stop shopping for help. Help must be available whenever a user is working. The Royal Bank of Canada has over 45,000 users of an interactive voice response (IVR) system that enables the caller to select the type of help needed and to be in
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
contact with a help desk analyst in less than 90 seconds.1 The value of this capability is so great that many organizations are outsourcing this function to help desk specialty organizations. Computerland Canada has implemented this service for several of the largest organizations in Canada. Help services are one of the fastest growing segments of that company's business.
Help desks provide feedback to the developers not only on all application errors but also in the critical areas of usage complexity and additional training needs. More than 75 percent of the 1,200 organizations surveyed in a 1991 survey by the Help Desk Institute expect to expand their current help desk operations over the next five years by increasing staff and expanding operating hours.2
Help desk personnel require trouble-ticket support software to be effective. Remedy software provides an effective implementation. All calls are logged, and the collective expertise of the help desk is available. All previous calls, problems, and solutions can be searched to help solve the current problem. Remedy records each problem and implements escalation procedures to ensure problems are solved in a timely manner. In addition, and more importantly, the software provides management with the capability to review problems and determine what changes are necessary to ensure that problems do not occur again.
Most calls in new implementations are caused by software that is awkward to use. Correcting these problems will greatly improve user efficiency. Many organizations who outsource help desk services do so at a declining cost each year—and will continue to do so—because as usage problems are resolved, calls will decline.
Remote Systems Management
LAN administrators should be able to connect remotely to and then manage the workstation of any user who has a problem. LANlord from Microcom provides support for the Windows 3.x desktop. Microsoft's Hermes product will provide support for Windows NT desktops in
late 1994. The products DCAF from IBM, PolyMod2 from Memsoft and Remote OS from Menlo provide support for the OS/2 environment. DCAF requires an OS/2 workstation but can control a user DOS or Windows workstation. Network General provides Distributed Sniffer, which operates both locally and remotely. It provides excellent support to a LAN administrator with a graphical user interface (GUI) to display results.
Because UNIX provides support for remote login, all UNIX environments provide good tools for remote systems management. Sun Connect, IBM Netview 6000, HP Openview, and OpenVisons products all provide good support dependent on the specific requirements of the distributed computing environment.
Each of these products provides an accurate record of performance and traffic loading at the point of analysis. If these analyses are done regularly, LAN administrators can detect problems as they arise. If the exploratory programs are infrequently run or trend lines are not created, problems will sneak up with no warning.
Security
In any application environment, managers must assess the security requirements. It is necessary to walk a thin line between enough security and overbearing security measures.
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
Users should find security to be invisible when they are authorized for a function and impenetrable when they are unauthorized. Security of the server should start by placing physical barriers around unauthorized access. Because users do not need physical access to the database and application servers, both should be placed in a locked room. Frequently the existing host computer room can be used to hold workgroup servers.
Every user of a client/server application should be assigned a personal ID and password. The ID can be used to assign authority and track access. Customized procedures can be built for each individual ID to manage backup, access times, and prompting. The DCE-defined Kerberos standard is preferred for UNIX servers. SunSoft provides Kerberos as an option to Secure RPC and Secure NFS, its C2-securable networking features available in Solaris, Version 2.1. Security is now recognized as an essential element in next-generation operating systems. Microsoft for NT and Novell with NetWare 4.x are both building security to meet the U.S. government C2 specifications.
Physical network security standards are being defined by several groups including the IEEE. SNMP-2 is being enhanced to support greater security. Operating systems designed from the ground up with security in mind form a trusted computing base (TCB) that incorporates encryption of passwords, safeguards against bypassing the logon system and the capability to assign privileges to user groups. NetWare 4.0 and Windows NT can also log attempted security breaches and trigger alarms that notify a network manager.
The new operating systems require that each account specifically be granted rights for remote access or encrypt passwords during remote access. Effective security must be defined as part of the enterprise-wide architecture put in place as an organization moves to the client/server model. In addition, effective administrative procedures for user definition, password maintenance, physical security, and application design must be instituted.
When maximum security is required, network and permanently stored data should be encrypted. Products such as Beaver Computer Company's DES coprocessor plug into sockets on its SL007 Notebook Computer to intercept data moving to and from the hard disk. The data encryption standard (DES) algorithm uses a personal key to make data unusable to anyone who lacks that key. This data is encrypted when it's stored and decrypted on retrieval. Only when the correct DES key is provided is the information meaningful. The U.S. government has attempted to define a standard data encryption algorithm for which they would possess a back door key. It is unlikely that this algorithm will be adopted by any other organizations.
Diskless workstations can prevent information from being copied to a floppy and removed or from being left where someone might break into the workstation to access the hard disk. No sensitive data should be stored on the client workstation or on an unprotected workgroup server.
LAN and Network Management Issues
As companies integrate LANs into their enterprise networks, the network administrator's role is changing drastically—gaining complexity and growing in importance, according to a market research report from Business Research Group (BRG) of Newton, Massachusetts.3
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
LAN management has changed from managing an isolated LAN to managing a LAN that's part of an enterprise network. The challenges of managing local networks, remote networks, and interconnections among them are complicated by the lack of global network administration software. Several studies have determined that network administration is the major priority of most organizations.
LAN administrators are working more closely with the existing host systems support group— the management information systems (MIS) department. Although workstations were once seen as the nemesis of MIS, they are now a key part of the strategic information technology direction of many companies. MIS departments must see their survival as dependent on integration of LANs into the enterprise system.
Integrating different technologies from different vendors requires a lot of work, and frequently the tools to build multivendor, multiprotocol networks are missing. Lack of knowledge of these new technologies is yet another stumbling block for LAN administrators.
Although the network administrator's job is becoming more difficult, it also is becoming increasingly important as the network plays a more strategic role in business-critical applications.
The shift from running business-critical applications on mainframes to workstation LANs has elevated the influence of workstation users and, subsequently, LAN administrators. Because of that shift from terminals to workstations, the people who reside between the data and the workstation—the LAN administrators—have an increasingly important role.
The LAN administrator should be responsible to both the MIS network management and the user community. Nearly three-quarters of respondents to the BRG survey agreed that department managers should control LAN applications, but MIS should control other aspects of LANs. The services that MIS departments provide for LANs typically are traditional MIS services carried over to the LAN environment. These services include:
∙ Network maintenance (91.1 percent of the sites)
∙ Network integration (87 percent)
∙ Capacity planning (82.3 percent)
∙ Equipment maintenance (80.4 percent)
∙ Help desks (79.7 percent)
Other services include:
∙ Security administration (77.5 percent)
∙ Network cabling and installation (76.3 percent)
∙ Network application administration (73.1 percent)
∙ Server backup (66.1 percent)
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
∙ Network application development (62.3 percent)
∙ PC data backup (41.8 percent)
Despite the growing complexity of networks, only 37 percent of the surveyed sites use a LAN management package. This lack of management tools is an impediment to enterprise-wide applications. Lack of security on LANs is another roadblock. Respondents tended to define a LAN management package as an umbrella enterprise-wide management system, such as IBM's NetView, rather than as an integration of tools that manage specific devices.
Many companies do not have the diagnostic devices or the expertise to effectively manage network hardware. Very few maintain historical records for ongoing comparative analysis. Only 41 percent of the respondents use protocol analyzers; about the same percentage use
cable activity testers and tracers. Only 28 percent use time domain reflectom-eters. Learning to operate such diagnostic tools is relatively easy; understanding what the results mean is not so simple.
In another recent survey, this time by Infonetics, Fortune 500 companies were asked to determine the reliability of their LANs and the costs related to unavailability. The survey produced statistics to which organizations making the move to client/server computing must be sensitive.
The first question evaluated the average length of time the LAN was unavailable after a failure. More than 50 percent of respondents noted that the LAN was unavailable for more than two hours. In fact 19 percent of the respondents noted that each failure took more than eight hours to repair. A failure meant the system was unavailable for the remainder of the working day. This will be an unacceptably long time if the business requires LAN availability in order to operate.
The second question determined the number of failures per year. More than 50 percent of the respondents noted more than 10 failures per year. In fact, 20 percent noted more than 50 per year, or one per week. Clearly, if each failure takes more than two hours to fix, the amount of downtime is well beyond acceptable levels.
The third question attempted to quantify the cost of lost productivity per year caused by LAN failure. In 36 percent of the organizations, more than $100,000 in lost productivity occurred in one year. Amazingly, in 7 percent of the organizations, the lost productivity exceeded $15 million. Clearly, there is an opportunity for substantial cost savings by reducing the frequency of errors and the mean time to repair. In critical applications such as the Fire Department dispatch systems described in Appendix A, the cost of downtime is measured in human lives as well as property damage.
The final question looked at lost revenue caused by failures. In 10 percent of organizations, more than $100,000 in losses were caused by system failures. Again amazingly, in 4 percent of the organizations, the loss exceeded $1 million. In the 25 percent of organizations where lost revenue was less than $100 and lost productivity was less than $5,000 per year, we can assume that the LAN is not integral to running the business.
Training Advantages of GUI Applications
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
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, they are invoked in the same way. Each new business application does not require user retraining in the use of
help, error correction, menu navigation, or security measures. The basic business process functionality to view, add, change, and delete information appears and works consistently from application to application. These processes are implemented as part of an organizational "view" implemented with a systems development environment (SDE) and incorporated into every application.
Because of GUIs, users can be trained once to properly use these features, and this knowledge can be reused for every new application. With standardized training on these fundamentals, new applications need only provide training on the new business processes. This will reduce costs, reduce stress on trainees, and decrease the time it takes to move new applications into production.
Reduced Training Costs
Forrester Research predicts that the use of GUIs will cut user training costs by 30 to 40 percent.2 In the Los Angeles Fire Department project described in Appendix A, the department has determined that training time has been reduced from the previous 10 weeks to only 4 weeks. Chief Rudd credits this to the ease of use provided by the GUI compared to the previous character mode implementation.
Adding a common front end to a mixture of existing applications dramatically reduced training costs for a major telephone company in another project. A reduction in staff turnover, attributed to the ease of use, further reduced training costs because of fewer new employees. In fast food restaurants, staff turnover may exceed 300 percent per year. Training costs could overwhelm profitability. The use of ergonomically engineered GUIs, with touch screen interfaces, enables new staff to be trained in less than one hour.
Although end-user training is the most costly and therefore receives the most benefit from the use of GUIs in client/server computing, there is still a need to train the technical support organization. Without proper training the system administrators, systems programmers, technicians, and developers will not build effective systems or support the system's users effectively. It costs about $300 to install the networking components to set up a workstation, but the salary cost for the maintenance staff can be $1,000 per machine if LAN Administration is done on a "learn as you do it" basis.3
Training the Technical Staff
With the critical nature of many client/server applications, downtime is a sensitive issue. Training of support personnel becomes a major concern for organizations moving forward with client/server applications. Many of the same techniques available to train users can be used in training the technical support organization. An SDE, consistent standards, multimedia, integrated help features, readable documentation, and training/test systems all have a place in the training of technical staff.
Technicians moving from a mainframe environment are challenged to overcome their culture shock and view these workstation-based systems as powerful equipment. These technicians must be trained to respect the knowledge possessed by the user community. In a client/server
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
implementation, it is common for technical support personnel to deal with users who are very familiar with the technology and who may occasionally be more sophisticated about the technology than the technician. This is a major culture shock for technical personnel familiar with the complexities of the host environment and the relative lack of sophistication of the mainframe user community.
Training in product specifics may be obtained from many sources: product vendors, professional trainers, colleges, user groups, and hands-on, in-house tutorials. Each organization should assess the degree and type of training pertinent to its particular situation. Novell, Microsoft, and IBM have extensive training programs available for technical support personnel and network administrators. And they have created active programs to certify trainers to provide training for their products.
Experience indicates that technical personnel in a business get the most benefit from product vendor training. Most personnel in the business will benefit more from training that is tailored to the specifics of an organization's SDE and business priorities. The single-system image concept is best implemented when detailed technical training reflects the need to know. Training systems incorporated into the SDE and tailored to an organization frequently provide the most optimal training environment because the sessions use terminology and business language that the trainees are familiar with.
A well-implemented Help Desk, using a product such as Remedy's Action Request System, is the best training vehicle for technical support personnel. This is the vehicle to capture the corporate experience and through workgroup computing techniques, to share this knowledge throughout the support organization, and to leverage the experience and expertise of the organization.
Systems Administrator Training
One of the first steps in training systems administration personnel to support client/server technology must be to teach the importance and reality of the applications. There is a prevalent attitude that workstations provide only personal productivity services. The implication of this attitude is that the organization doesn't really care about availability of the LANs. Insufficient training in this area will doom all other training efforts.
Once system administration personnel accept the requirements for system availability, the next steps are much easier. Administrators must understand the level of performance and ease of use their users require. Engineers and clerical users do have different needs, expectations, and technical abilities. Management should direct training into the areas that are of concern to the organization. In small workgroup LANs, many performance and automation issues are not nearly as significant as ease of use and ease of maintenance. In large LANs, performance and automated procedures may be sufficiently critical to justify the use of complex installation and maintenance procedures.
The cost of training expert administrators and technicians is such that most organizations will need to provide remote LAN and WAN management and support. It often is impractical to have highly technical support personnel at every workgroup location. Thus, as part of their training personnel, they should be made aware of both the technical and human-interaction protocols of working remotely. The lack of eye contact inherent in a remote support situation means that the person providing support to a frustrated user must be able to build and
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
maintain a rapport over the telephone or through e-mail. This is a challenge that many organizations have not addressed in their training. The inability to deal with this situation has led some organizations to use outsourced support with professionally trained help desk and technical support personnel.
LAN Administration
The first step in system administration training is to understand the organization's conventions. Naming, security, help procedures, and so on must be understood and implemented uniformly between applications and products. Large systems rolled out in many locations should develop administrator training as well as user training. This training will ensure that each installation operates the same way and that remote support personnel can communicate with local administrators.
The administrator should receive thorough software product training. Word processors, spreadsheets, databases, graphics, and other complex products should be installed with uniform default settings across all sites. In order to properly select these options and support requests for help, the administrator should be an expert in the use of the product. Remote support will be much easier when products are installed with consistent defaults.
Disk space management is an important issue for the administrator. Proper file naming conventions and defaults will ensure that each user's or workgroup's data is localized for backups and archiving. If everyone stores data files in random locations, it will be extremely difficult to manage space usage. The administrator must understand what the product requirements are and arrange to have temporary and backup files created on volumes that can be cleaned up regularly. This is an often-overlooked aspect of training in product usage.
Products such as Network General's Sniffer enable LAN administrators to monitor the network for capacity and problems without the need for detailed knowledge of the applications. Contributing to the power of these products is their capability to be used without prior detailed training on the specific technologies employed on the LAN. Sniffer captures LAN traffic, analyzes the data, and recommends actions based on its assessment of the data's meaning. Internal LAN message formats are interpreted by the software so that the LAN administrator can take action based on the recommendations without the need for detailed knowledge of these message formats. This feature is particularly critical with remote LANs, for which it is not possible to have the most highly trained LAN administrative personnel resident.
WAN Issues
All the same WAN network issues associated with remote terminal access to host systems exist in the client/server-to-WAN access. Additional complexities arise when data is distributed to the remote LAN. Application programs that are distributed to remote servers present many of the same problems as do distributed databases. Administrators must be trained in the software and in procedures to handle network definition, network management, and remote backup and recovery. Many of the WAN problems appear as unrelated incidents to remote users who don't understand the WAN issues. It is imperative to train the WAN administrator in the use of remote management tools. Tools such as IBM's NetView and Cabletron's Spectrum enable administrators to remotely manage the LAN-to-WAN environment needed for many client/server applications.
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
Training developers in WAN issues is also critical because of the WAN's impact on communication issues. Where data is stored and how it is to be retrieved must be considered in the development of applications. The conversations will be quite different for a WAN rather than a LAN.
WANs are particularly complex to understand and optimize because of the many configuration options available. Training WAN administrators to understand all of the options available to establish an optimal topology is more expensive than many organizations can justify. Tools such as IBM's NetView, Sunsoft's Sun/Connect, HP's Openview, and various products from BBN and Openvision can be used to provide recommendations and assessments to the WAN administrator. Training in the tools is frequently more valuable than extensive training in the WAN technologies.
Operating System Issues
Administrators must be expertly trained in the operating system (OS) used by clients and servers in the client/server application. Networks frequently run several OSs—such as DOS, Windows 3.x, Windows NT, OS/2, and UNIX—within the supported client/server implementations. This diversity of platforms challenges the administrators to have expertise not only in the particulars of a single OS but also in the interaction of the various OSs.
New releases of OSs introduce additional challenges as new interactions and incompatibilities appear. In the UNIX arena, an additional challenge arises when the hardware platforms are not homogeneous and several UNIX derivatives, each with minor variations, are being used simultaneously. The costs and implications of training in this area must not be overlooked. In the design and planning for a new client/server application, the training requirements should be carefully considered before an organization establishes too many OS configurations.
PC/Workstation Issues
Administrators must be trained in the basic hardware components of the workstation. Many problems that occur in the field can be fixed remotely by a user with direction from the remote administrator. Common problems such as unplugged devices, loose cards, or lost configurations, can often be repaired by a user with some willingness to follow directions. Support personnel should be trained in software to support remote PC/workstation logins. Software such as Checkit PRO for the PC and ESRA for UNIX can be used to diagnose more complex hardware problems.
Application Issues
Administrators must be well-versed in the application to enable rapid and effective communication with remote users. They should be trained in both the functionality and technology of the applications. It is common to designate a sophisticated user as the support administrator for an application. Because most problems are related to applications, the application support administrator should be an expert in how business users utilize the application. It is especially important with the first applications being rolled out for remote usage, that support administrators be able to rapidly determine whether a problem is related to application usage or truly technical.
Class: MSc(SE)SY Unit IV Sub: Client Server Technology
Database Administrator Training
Database administrators face additional challenges in a client/server implementation when data is distributed. Even in single-site, shared database applications, the client/server model typically leads to ad hoc end-user access. Most current host implementations operate in an environment where trained operations and technical support staff are operating and supporting the applications. This ensures that standard operating procedures will be followed and that problems can be solved quickly by experienced technical support personnel.
In the client/server environment, distributed data implies that data may be stored where no skilled staff are available to provide support. In addition, the additional complexity of the new environment requires new training for existing database administration staff. Design issues are particularly critical here because performance can be dramatically affected by the location of data. Remote control of utility functions is mandatory, and training existing staff to handle these procedures presents real challenges, especially when they continue to operate existing systems. Once again, the use of SDE-developed standard procedures that are reused between applications will allow this training to be provided once and applied to all new client/server applications.
End-User Training
End users should be trained once in the user interface standards defined by the organization as part of the SDE. The best time to provide this training is in conjunction with the first applications. It is likely that users will already know how to use a workstation for personal productivity. The new standards will not be dramatically different from those currently used unless a very different technology is being employed.
Workstation Operations
It is important to train in the shared use of the workstation for personal productivity and client/server application functionality. Users will be very unhappy if their existing valued capabilities are lost as a result of the new system. This training should include such standard features as security, help, navigation (how to get from one function to the next), table management and scrolling, as well as standard business processes such as viewing, adding, changing, and deleting information.
Applications and New Technologies
When the standard environment is understood, the particular application processes can be trained within this environment. In the future, new applications should require only training in the new business processes. The training should take place on a test system that replicates the production environment with training databases. This method ensures that the training environment matches production and can act as an acceptance test for the application. Training cannot take place on software that is faulty. User confidence and concentration will be lost if errors are regularly encountered. Version releases of the software should enable training to be provided on portions of the application as it is ready, without the need to wait for products to be completed.
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