Enterprise Client Management with Internet Suspend/Resume

Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) is an exciting new model for managing client machines in the enterprise. ISR provides the administrative benefits of central management without sacrificing the performance benefits of thick-client, personal computing. This capability is made possible through the novel combination of two wellunderstood technologies: virtual machines and distributed storage management. With ISR, a user’s entire personal computing environment, including the operating system, applications, data files, customizations, and current computing state, is maintained in centralized storage. By leveraging virtual machine technology, this computing environment may be transported through the network and rapidly instantiated on any ISR-enabled client machine. The central management may include automatic backup, virus scanning, and maintenance. Further, the ISR software stack is naturally partitioned into two parts: the ISR base and the user environment. The ISR base, which comprises the virtual machine monitor and management tools, runs directly on the physical hardware and is centrally managed by the enterprise Information Technology (IT) department. The user environment is the familiar software stack, which comprises the operating system and applications; it may be managed by the end-user, the IT department, or both. This separation enables the user environment to rapidly migrate from physical platform to physical platform to recover from hardware or software failures, for example. This separation also enables the IT department to protect the enterprise network by quarantining badly behaving user environments. INTRODUCTION Over the past two decades, the advent of the Personal Computer (PC) has transformed the computing industry. Part of the PC’s success in the marketplace is due to its personal nature. Individual users have their own hardware resources, manage their own software resources, and are able to customize their computing environment to suit their needs. In an enterprise environment, however, this aspect of personal computing often imposes a maintenance burden on the Information Technology (IT) department that manages the hundreds or thousands of machines that constitute the computing environment of the enterprise. Internet Suspend/Resume (ISR) is a new technology that improves the manageability of computing environments without sacrificing the personal aspect of modern desktop computing. Moreover, ISR enables centralized-style maintenance of personal computing state while still preserving the performance benefits of thick-client computing. Personal computing state, in the context of ISR, refers to the user’s entire computing environment–including the operating system, applications, data files, customizations, and current execution state. The ISR system collects each user’s computing environment into a set of files, called a parcel, and it maintains these parcels on network servers. During normal operation, ISR is virtually invisible to the end user. In the context of a corporate campus, for example, as employees prepare to go home in the evening, they suspend the operation of their computers by clicking an icon on their desktop. This operation is very similar to closing the lid on a laptop in that the current execution state of the computer is collected. However, an ISR suspend operation also updates the master copy of the parcel, which is stored on a centrally managed ISR server. Intel Technology Journal, Volume 8, Issue 4, 2004 Enterprise Client Management with Internet Suspend/Resume 314 Once the user’s parcel is updated on the server, the corporate IT department is able to perform common maintenance tasks such as generating a backup copy of the user’s environment, or scanning the parcel for virus signatures. When the employee returns to work the next day, he or she is able to resume the execution of his/her computing environment. This operation will instantiate the user’s computing environment on that client machine. Execution will resume with precisely the same state that existed at the time of suspend: the correct applications will be open, the user’s data files will be open, and the cursor will be in the expected location. Two properties are essential to the usefulness of ISR as a management tool. First, the IT department administers the personal computing state of every user according to a centralized style. Consequently, the IT department is able to perform traditional centralized maintenance tasks such as backup copy creation on the user parcels while still providing the high-performance end-user experience associated with thick-client computing. Second, the IT department, not the user, administers the low-level ISR software that runs on all client machines. On an ISR client, the user’s environment does not control the hardware directly. Instead, the ISR client program instantiates and supports the user’s software. Because the function of this software is limited to supporting the user, or guest, software, it is relatively small and simple. Certainly, this program is much less complex that the guest software it supports. Because the ISR client program is small and simple, it should be less error-prone and easier to maintain than the massive modern operating systems that IT departments currently manage on client machines. Further, the ISR client program does not have to be customized to the guest software that it supports. A single instance of the client program can support many different guest operating systems, for example. Therefore, the ISR client program represents a uniform computing base to the IT department. Most importantly, the user never modifies the ISR client program. The ISR client architecture effectively divides the client software stack into two parts: the ISR client program and the user environment. The IT department exclusively manages the ISR client program. However, the user environment, which includes the traditional operating system and applications, may be managed either by the user or by the IT department, according to IT policy, just as in non-ISR computing systems. We expect this division to be the right compromise between user control and IT control in many situations. This organization enables users to modify their software environment while still providing system administrators with a stable, uniform management platform.