CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

Ansale Cadeleña Edillor Miro Obando Ong Peralta Pepino Yuson

CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

A field of management that focuses on establishing and maintaining consistency of a system or product's performance and its functional and physical attributes with its requirements, design, and operational information throughout its life.

CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

CM Can be defined as the management

of security features and assurances through control of changes made to hardware, software, firmware, documentation, test, test fixtures, and test documentation throughout the life cycle of an information system.

CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

CM for information assurance, sometimes referred to as Secure Configuration Management, relies upon performance, functional, and physical attributes of IT platforms and products and their environments to determine the appropriate security features and assurances that are used to measure a system configuration state.

HISTORY

Configuration management was first developed by the United States Air Force for the Department of Defense in the 1950s as a technical management discipline of hardware.

The concepts of this discipline have been widely adopted by numerous technical management functions, including:

HISTORY

Systems Engineering (SE) Integrated Logistics Support (ILS) Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) ISO 9000 Prince2 project management methodology COBIT Information Technology Infrastructure

Library (ITIL) Product lifecycle management Application lifecycle management

HISTORY

Many of these functions and models have redefined configuration management from its traditional holistic approach to technical management. Some treat configuration management as being similar to a librarian activity, and break out change control or change management as a separate or stand alone discipline. However the bottom-line is and always shall be Traceability.

HISTORY

Traceability refers to the completeness of the information about every step in a process chain.

The formal definition: Traceability is the ability to chronologically interrelate uniquely identifiable entities in a way that is verifiable.

Traceability is the ability to verify the history, location, or application of an item by means of documented recorded identification.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT The traditional software configuration

management (SCM) process is looked upon by practitioners as the best solution to handling changes in software projects. It identifies the functional and physical attributes of software at various points in time, and performs systematic control of changes to the identified attributes for the purpose of maintaining software integrity and traceability throughout the software development life cycle.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT The SCM process further defines the

need to trace changes, and the ability to verify that the final delivered software has all of the planned enhancements that are supposed to be included in the release. It identifies four procedures that must be defined for each software project to ensure that a sound SCM process is implemented. They are:

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Configuration identification Configuration control Configuration status accounting Configuration audits

These terms and definitions change from standard to standard, but are essentially the same.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Configuration identification is the process

of identifying the attributes that define every aspect of a configuration item. A configuration item is a product (hardware and/or software) that has an end-user purpose. These attributes are recorded in configuration documentation and baselined. Baselining an attribute forces formal configuration change control processes to be effected in the event that these attributes are changed.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Configuration change control is a set

of processes and approval stages required to change a configuration item's attributes and to re-baseline them.

Configuration status accounting is the ability to record and report on the configuration baselines associated with each configuration item at any moment of time.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Configuration audits are broken into

functional and physical configuration audits. They occur either at delivery or at the moment of effecting the change. A functional configuration audit ensures that functional and performance attributes of a configuration item are achieved, while a physical configuration audit ensures that a configuration item is installed in accordance with the requirements of its detailed design documentation.

SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Configuration management is widely used by

many military organizations to manage the technical aspects of any complex systems, such as weapon systems, vehicles, and information systems. The discipline combines the capability aspects that these systems provide an organization with the issues of management of change to these systems over time.

Outside of the military, CM is appropriate to a wide range of fields and industry and commercial sectors.

COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Computer hardware configuration

management is the process of creating and maintaining an up-to-date record of all the components of the infrastructure, including related documentation. Its purpose is to show what makes up the infrastructure and illustrate the physical locations and links between each item, which are known as configuration items.

COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT Computer hardware configuration goes

beyond the recording of computer hardware for the purpose of asset management, although it can be used to maintain asset information. The extra value provided is the rich source of support information that it provides to all interested parties. This information is typically stored together in a configuration management database (CMDB). This concept was introduced by ITIL (Information Technology Infrastructure Library).

COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT The scope of configuration management is

assumed to include, at a minimum, all configuration items used in the provision of live, operational services.

Computer hardware configuration management provides direct control over information technology (IT) assets and improves the ability of the service provider to deliver quality IT services in an economical and effective manner. Configuration management should work closely with change management.

COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT All components of the IT

infrastructure should be registered in the CMDB. The responsibilities of configuration management with regard to the CMDB are:

identification control status accounting verification

COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENTThe scope of configuration management is

assumed to include: physical client and server hardware

products and versions operating system software products and

versions application development software products

and versions technical architecture product sets and

versions as they are defined and introduced

COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT live documentation networking products and versions live application products and

versions definitions of packages of software

releases definitions of hardware base

configurations configuration item standards and

definitions

COMPUTER HARDWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENTThe benefits of computer hardware

configuration management are: helps to minimize the impact of changes provides accurate information on CIs

(Configuration Items) improves security by controlling the

versions of CIs (Configuration Items) in use facilitates adherence to legal obligations helps in financial and expenditure planning

MAINTENANCE SYSTEMS

Configuration management is used to maintain an understanding of the status of complex assets with a view to maintaining the highest level of serviceability for the lowest cost. Specifically, it aims to ensure that operations are not disrupted due to the asset (or parts of the asset) overrunning limits of planned lifespan or below quality levels.

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

More recently configuration management has been applied to large construction projects which can often be very complex and have a huge amount of details and changes that need to be documented. Construction agencies such as the Federal Highway Administration have used configuration management for their infrastructure projects.

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

There have been several construction based configuration management software developed

that aim to document change orders and RFIs in order to ensure a project stays on schedule and on budget. These programs can also store information to aid in the maintenance and modification of the infrastructure when it is completed.

CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY

One such application, ccsNet, was tested in a case study funded by the Federal Transportation Administration (FTA) in which the efficacy of configuration management was measured through comparing the approximately 80% complete construction of the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Agency (LACMTA) 1st and 2nd segments of the Red Line, a $5.3 billion rail construction project. This study yielded results indicating a benefit to using configuration management on projects of this nature.

COMPUTER SIMULATION AND EMULATORS

Ansale Cadeleña Edillor Miro Obando Ong Peralta Pepino Yuson

COMPUTER SIMULATION

A computer simulation, a computer model, or a computational model is a computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system.

Computer simulations have become a useful part of mathematical modeling of many natural systems in physics, astrophysics, chemistry and biology, human systems in economics, psychology, social science, and engineering.

Simulations can be used to explore and gain new insights into new technology, and to estimate the performance of systems too complex for analytical solutions.

COMPUTER SIMULATION

Computer simulations vary from computer programs that run a few minutes, to network-based groups of computers running for hours, to ongoing simulations that run for days. The scale of events being simulated by computer simulations has far exceeded anything possible (or perhaps even imaginable) using the traditional paper-and-pencil mathematical modeling.

HISTORY

Computer simulation developed hand-in-hand with the rapid growth of the computer, following its first large-scale deployment during the Manhattan Project in World War II to model the process of nuclear detonation. It was a simulation of 12 hard spheres using a Monte Carlo algorithm. Computer simulation is often used as an adjunct to, or substitute for, modeling systems for which simple closed form analytic solutions are not possible. There are many types of computer simulations; the common feature they all share is the attempt to generate a sample of representative scenarios for a model in which a complete enumeration of all possible states of the model would be prohibitive or impossible.

DATA PREPARATION

The external data requirements of simulations and models vary widely. For some, the input might be just a few numbers (for example, simulation of a waveform of AC electricity on a wire), while others might require terabytes of information (such as weather and climate models).

Input sources also vary widely:

DATA PREPARATION

Sensors and other physical devices connected to the model;

Control surfaces used to direct the progress of the simulation in some way;

Current or Historical data entered by hand;

Values extracted as by-product from other processes;

Values output for the purpose by other simulations, models, or processes.

DATA PREPARATION

Lastly, the time at which data is available varies:

"invariant" data is often built into the model code, either because the value is truly invariant (e.g. the value of π) or because the designers consider the value to be invariant for all cases of interest;

data can entered into the simulation when it starts up, for example by reading one or more files, or by reading data from a preprocessor;

data can be provided during the simulation run, for example by a sensor network;

DATA PREPARATION

Because of this variety, and that many common elements exist between diverse simulation systems, there are a large number of specialized simulation languages. The best-known of these may be Simula (sometimes Simula-67, after the year 1967 when it was proposed). There are now many others.

EXAMPLES

CGI computer simulation like computer-generated-imagery (CGI) animation.

Numerical simulation (differential equations)

Stochastic simulation (probabilities) Statistical simulations (forcasting) Agent based simulation (ecology) Human cognition and performance Environment simulation

EMULATOR

an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates (or emulates) the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system. This focus on exact reproduction of external behavior is in contrast to some other forms of computer simulation, in which an abstract model of a system is being simulated. For example, a computer simulation of a hurricane or a chemical reaction is not emulation.

EMULATORS IN COMPUTING

Emulation refers to the ability of a computer program in an electronic device to emulate (imitate) another program or device. Many printers, for example, are designed to emulate Hewlett-Packard LaserJet printers because so much software is written for HP printers. If a non-HP printer emulates an HP printer, any software written for a real HP printer will also run in the non-HP printer emulation and produce equivalent printing.

EMULATORS IN COMPUTING

In a theoretical sense, the Church-Turing thesis implies that any operating environment can be emulated within any other. However, in practice, it can be quite difficult, particularly when the exact behavior of the system to be emulated is not documented and has to be deduced through reverse engineering. It also says nothing about timing constraints; if the emulator does not perform as quickly as the original hardware, the emulated software may run much more slowly than it would have on the original hardware, possibly triggering time interrupts that alter performance.

BENEFITS

Emulators maintain the original look, feel, and behavior of the digital object, which is just as important as the digital data itself.

Despite the original cost of developing an emulator, it may prove to be the more cost efficient solution over time.

Many emulators have already been developed and released under GNU General Public License through the open source environment, allowing for wide scale collaboration.

BENEFITS

Reduces labor hours, because rather than continuing an ongoing task of continual data migration for every digital object, once the library of past and present operating systems and application software is established in an emulator, these same technologies are used for every document using those platforms.

Emulators allow video games exclusive to one system to be played on another. For example, a PlayStation 2 exclusive video game could (in theory) be played on a PC or Xbox 360 using an emulator.

OBSTACLES

Intellectual property - Many technology vendors implemented non-standard features during program development in order to establish their niche in the market, while simultaneously applying ongoing upgrades to remain competitive. While this may have advanced the technology industry and increased vendor’s market share, it has left users lost in a preservation nightmare with little supporting documentation due to the proprietary nature of the hardware and software.

Copyright laws are not yet in effect to address saving the documentation and specifications of proprietary software and hardware in an emulator module

STRUCTURE

Typically, an emulator is divided into modules that correspond roughly to the emulated computer's subsystems. Most often, an emulator will be composed of the following modules:

a CPU emulator or CPU simulator (the two terms are mostly interchangeable in this case)

a memory subsystem module various I/O devices emulators Buses are often not emulated, either for reasons

of performance or simplicity, and virtual peripherals communicate directly with the CPU or the memory subsystem.

EMULATION VS SIMULATIONS

It has recently become common to use the word "emulate" in the context of software. However, before 1980, "emulation" referred only to emulation with a hardware or microcode assist, while "simulation" referred to pure software emulation. For example, a computer specially built for running programs designed for another architecture is an emulator. In contrast, a simulator could be a program which runs on a PC, so that old Atari games can be simulated on it. Purists continue to insist on this distinction, but currently the term "emulation" often means the complete imitation of a machine executing binary code.