Management of the small size network is possible by single network administrator. He/she could simply get access to any workstation or server in the network physically since it is located nearby. Addressing conflict problem could be quickly located and solved.
Modern networks are big and growing very fast which makes their management a complex task. In order to help network administrator, the network management services are being introduced. The management services are performing series of tasks in the network, ensuring correct data access, security and tracking network activity.
On the network could be several servers dedicated entirely for the purpose of management. There are numerous types of management services that can be used in the network, some of them are specially designed for specific purpose, but most common ones are described below.
Types of network management services:
Address management – managing network addresses and ensuring that there is no address conflicts in the network. The problem can be resolved remotely over the network.
Security management – checking that network is being currently secured and notify administrator in case of a breach.
Traffic management – monitoring the network and checking for the network overload. Traffic monitoring is critical for the large scale networks.
Load balancing – depending on data transfer activity, traffic would be distributed evenly on the network. This is required for Web servers which have unpredictable amount of requests.
Types of Hardware and Software management services:
Hardware diagnosis - all the hardware equipment is being monitored and in case of failure, the administrator is being notified.
Hardware and software management – system automatically gathers information about all hardware units in the network and about software installed. Each clients workstations information is being stored in the database.
Data backup and restore – automatic and usually scheduled process of storing a copy of data on backup servers and restoring information from them on demand.
File or software distribution system allows automatically send files or install software remotely on number of workstations. Either server or client himself triggers the installation process.
Licence tracking service is checking that amount of currently running licenced software is not exceeding amount defined in licence agreement of the software. This is critical system for legal reasons and it helps to save money by purchasing less licences than there are workstations.
Of course the amount of services is much greater than described above, and the amount of them is increasing all the time.
