Simplifying Systems Management

Direct2Dell — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 18:19:44 GMT

Earlier this year, hardware standardization from the desktop to the datacenter was one of the key themes...

re: Simplifying Diagnostics with the Common Diagnostics Model

dave — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 06:20:23 GMT

good move... will be a blessing for all sys admins

re: Simplifying Diagnostics with the Common Diagnostics Model

Dell Lied — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 03:19:48 GMT

The Common Diagnostic Model is something I look forward to seeing implimented.

Also, this will obviously lead to hardware and BIOS implimentation changes. One thing I would find very useful at the BIOS level, for diagnostics and other purposes, would be the support of disk image booting (virtual drive in bios). Preferably from either .ISO spec images or an image that .ISO can easily be converted to. This would allow for a wide variety of useful tasks to be performed for system diagnostics. In additon it would allow for OS installation from a disk image off of a USB key or external USB drive. And I'm talking lawful uses here, not warez. I'd love to load 5 of my commonly used live-cd's in .ISO format onto a USB thumbdrive and be able too choose one to boot off of just by enabling boot from USB in bios, without having to install the OS on the USB first.

I realize that might be outside the scope of the CDM, but it would be a very useful addition leaving room for further future benefits such as virtual machine/OS image loading from removeable devices and more. I say future because a hypervisor would need to be implimented as well.

Finally, although I'm not a programmer, I hope the CDMF doesn't end up creating a barrier to open source and freeware developers through the creation of pricey licensing and logo programs in order to take programmatic advantage of the CDM hardware reporting capabilities.

Regardless, as an end-user, I can't wait to see the CDM realized.

-DL