System Management: Tools and Techniques

This report provides an overview of system management in organizations, focusing on the tools and techniques used for efficient management of computer-based systems. It compares the existing system management tools of GCM Company and explores the benefits of emerging tools. The report concludes that adopting advanced tools can help address the prevailing issues in the company's server management system.

System Management
An overview of Tools and Techniques
Student Details
8/28/2019

Executive Summary
System Management is the process in which the efficient management of various computer-based
systems is done by keeping in view that all requirements of the user, as well as system, are fulfilled with
minimum losses. Basic activities involved in system management process are managing the back up as
well as a recovery mechanism, spooling of the printer, various tasks related to one’s job, etc. In this
report, the tools of system management of GCM Company are compared. Contrast is also drawn upon
the efficient tools by comparing existing system management tools of the company with newly emerging
tools. It is concluded that new tools can reduce the prevailing issues in the GCM Company, which are
mainly related with the server management system of the company.

Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Existing Management Systems Comparison................................................................................................4
Cacti.........................................................................................................................................................4
Icinga.......................................................................................................................................................4
Monit.......................................................................................................................................................4
Comparison and Contrast of Management Systems...................................................................................5
Nagios XI..................................................................................................................................................5
Zabbix......................................................................................................................................................5
Op5 monitor............................................................................................................................................5
Conclusion...................................................................................................................................................5
Bibliography................................................................................................................................................7

Introduction
System Management is the process in an organization that helps the organization in managing its entire
computer-based or technology-based systems. Generally, the system is the collection of organization of
some elements, which have a common purpose1. Many systems make an organization. In this report, an
analysis is done in order to monitor the system management mechanism of a company named GCM as
per the given case study as well as taking corrective actions according to prevailing conditions. As the
system admin of the GCM Company, the aim is to bring efficiency in the system management process of
the company by comparing the existing server management system tools as well as contrasting them
with rapidly effective emerging tools and techniques.
Existing Management Systems Comparison
In GCM Company there are many server management systems available, which have the potential to
bring sustainability in the operations of the company. The company is running almost from two decades
and dealing with technology in an effective manner2. The company is using many server management
systems such as monit, OpenNMS, cacti, Icinga, etc. Among these system management tools, the best
productivity tools for the company’s operations until now considered to be:
Cacti
This software is a flagship solution operating among various open-source network-analyzing software in
the infrastructure of IT. It is considered in the field of representation of the network in graphical form. In
GCM Company, cacti help them in building such a platform of software that can help the user in building
graphs based on the presence of statistical Data. For this tool, there is the availability of templates also.
In the company, cacti help in dividing the graphic displays as well as collected data in order to make
reprocess and reorganization of data easy3.
Icinga
It is a tool, which is helpful in monitoring as well as altering the process of a system. It is new and
advances a version of Nagios, with a difference in its configuration process. Icinga has the ability to be
configured by the web interface as well as help those users, who do not want to monitor the software
with the command line4. In GCM Company, it can help in monitoring the software without command
line as well as can be integrated easily with PNP4Nagios, Graphite, and inGraph.

Monit
It is also supervision or monitory tool, however, unlike Icinga, it uses Command line to supervise various
software of the user. It also has the capacity to supervise the things with the help of an HTTP web
server. In GCM Company, this system management tool is able to supervise various software by
automatically providing maintenance, repair and running effective actions in the situation of errors5.
The analyses of various server management systems, which are currently considered by the company,
are discussed in the above lines. By comparing all three of them, it can be said that the GCM Company
have good system management tools however they are not advanced. The market of technology is
changing on a rapid scale. In order to be successful in the market, it is the responsibility of GCM to
involve newly emerged as well as advanced tools or techniques.
Comparison and Contrast of Management Systems
In the above lines, some sever management systems, which are currently in use by the GCM Company,
are compared by understanding their actual functions and their implication of the operations of the
user. It is not sufficient for GCM Company to work with their old server management systems, as they
are now not fully capable of solving the prevailing system management problems of the GCM Company.
In order to bring efficiency in the functions of the GCM and its various IT-based systems, it is advised to
the company to kindly look into newly emerging system management tools, some of which are also
described in following lines:
Nagios XI
In today’s complex IT world, this tool is considered one of the best system management tools available
in the market6. In GCM Company this tool can help in monitoring the bandwidth of many consumers. It
can also help the company in monitoring IP address, SLAs, servers and Internet Usage timing. This tool
can ultimately help GCM in providing sustainability as well as increasing the scale of operations of the
GCM Company.
Zabbix
It is also a rapidly emerging tool of server management as it has the capacity to monitor anything
present in the network. It can help GCM company in monitoring the clouds, servers, applications,
database, services, virtual machines, etc. This managing tool is open and free to all with no hidden coast.
It is supported by SNMP, IPMI agents as well as other custom methods.

Op5 monitor
This tool helps the organization in monitoring or supervising various on-premise as well as off-premise
cloud applications7. In GCM Company, it can help in monitoring various applications, servers, networks
of IT department or computer-based systems, etc. These all can help the company in understanding the
large volume of devices in a device that is highly scalable for a particular distributed environment.
All of this newly emerged system management tool the GCM Company can maintain IT-based
applications in an effective manner. This, in turn, can help in minimizing or removing all prevailing IT
concerned issues and hence can bring productivity in functioning8.
Conclusion
The management of system includes some steps that are the distribution of software, up-gradation of it,
management of user profiles, controlling the current version of the software, protection against virus
and many more things. In order to accomplish these steps, the companies need to make their system
management process effective and efficient enough, which can be possible with the help of some tools
and techniques. In this report, a comparative analysis of various tools already in use by the GCM
company is done as well as their contrast with newly emerging system management tools have also
been done. It is cleared from the contrast that the new tools are more efficient when compared to old
ones, as they are advanced and have the capacity to minimize the IT-related issue prevailing in the
company.

Bibliography
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826-831, 2010.
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and DIagnosis, 1st ed. Boca Raton: CRC Press, 2015.
[4] Hamid Tohidi, "The role of risk management in IT systems of organizations," Procedia Computer
Science, vol. 3, pp. 881-887, 2011.
[5] A. L. Rice, The Enterprise and its Environment A system theory of management organization, 1st ed.:
Routledge, 2013.
[6] Darrell Rigby and Barbara Bilodeau, Management Tools & Trends 2015.: Bain & Company, 2015.
[7] Andrew P. Sage and William B. Rouse, Handbook of Systems Engineering and Management, 2nd ed.:
John Wiley & Sons, 2014.
[8] Öncü Hazır, "A review of analytical models, approaches and decision support tools in project
monitoring and control," International Journal of Project Management, vol. 33, no. 4, pp. 808-815,
2015.
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