Abstract
This paper describes a search facility for systems management that was designed and implemented to simplify the management of large IT infrastructures. As the complexity of data centers or telecommunication networks increases, managing such infrastructures involves large amounts of data originating from many and diverse sources. In a typical IT management infrastructure, we find many management components such as commercial and open source products (e.g., for monitoring); custom, be-spoke software (e.g., a home-grown inventory database) as well as additional conventional (e.g., calendar) and unconventional (e.g., Web forums, blogs) data sources. The amount of information and the number of tools that are at the disposal of the system operator for management tasks are both wide-ranging and overwhelming. Finding the set of information and tools that is relevant to solve a given problem is a challenge, and typically requires expertise in how to extract data from the available data sources and how to use that extracted data effectively. A search facility that can locate data and tools is beneficial to systems management, but to maximize its impact, it needs to address the heterogeneity of data and data sources; provide task-focused, structured and enriched results, and be both scalable and cost-effective in the dynamic and changing environment of today's IT infrastructures. © 2010 IEEE.