ABSTRACT
They walked through into the banqueting hall, its dark vaulted roof hung with banners. “If you don’t like that one, think about the system configurations we have been describing. The elements in the description have quite different lifecycles and ownership. The main servers are fully determined, and we know all about them, right down to their serial numbers and the colour of the cabinets. The local networks are under our management, but are reconfigured and upgraded all the time; we try to track the changes, but they are largely self-configuring at the detailed level, so we concentrate on capturing major properties, like VLAN structure and security domains. The customer
systems outside, across the wide area, are beyond our control. We often don’t even know what kind of equipment is involved, and must be satisfied with laying down minimum capabilities for things to work. Yet they are all elements in the same configuration specification.”
