Week 5: Enterprise Management Systems

This week in class the topic of enterprise management was discussed.  Enterprise management deals with the installation and management of large corporation infrastructures and the many components that are housed within them.  As a continuation from last week, the topic of operating system installation for large corporations was also addressed.  As technology continues to progress, the size of computer systems continually decreases.  The cost of these systems has also decreased dramatically making more of them readily available for companies to utilize.  This has lead to a growing complexity among many corporate infrastructures due to an increase in the number of smaller machines present on their networks.  In order to combat the often strenuous task of managing a corporate infrastructure, many tools and techniques have been developed.  For example, there is a wide array of Microsoft products available to help companies with every step of the IT management process from start-up to long-term maintenance and monitoring.  I knew it was a complicated endeavor managing a corporate infrastructure, but I had no idea just how much effort, planning, and resources went into it.  One thing I found especially interesting within this week's material was unattended and distributed share operating system installation.  This technique saves corporations a lot of time, effort, and money by stream-lining and standardizing the process of installing an operating system on company machines.  In the distribution share technique, the operating system deployment tools as well as an image of the operating system install files are housed on a share server.  These files are then uploaded to the client machines and installed.  This process can be made completely automated with the use of setup answer files which instruct the setup program of which options to select during the installation process.  This week we also learned about the configuration phases of the Windows 7 installation process and the configurations that take place during each phase.

This week the class format was restructured, so we did not have access to the homework or quiz until the day of class.  This change kind of threw off my schedule for the week, but it did allow me to spend more time reviewing the material for the week.   With the extra review time, I felt that I was able to gain a better understanding of the topics presented this week and explore more of the virtual handouts provided.  I do have some confusion still about the configuration phases of the Windows 7 installation.  I also found it difficult to keep track of all the Microsoft deployment tools presented and their functions.

The topic this week is a very important skill to have when working within the Information Technology field.  Everyday IT professionals are asked to come up with new and innovative ways to save their companies time and money.  The material presented this week seems like it would be a good way to gain some savings in this area.  New technologies and techniques are being developed constantly, and it is important that IT professionals stay up-to-date on the latest breakthroughs.  As an Information Technology student, I am not excluded from this.  It is important that I become familiar with such techniques now so that I can utilize them in my future career and be viewed as a valuable asset by my employer.