• Monitoring can include usage of Central Processing Unit (CPU), memory, energy, cache, heat, on-line and off-line storage, network connectivity, network loads of particular computers. In a distributed system, this also includes the metrics associated with the connectivity of the nodes that participate in the distributed system (i.e., the latency, lag, error rates, upload and download speeds, etc).
• Information about the overall operations need to be handled. For example, data used to Trace, and Debug; provide Informational context; and alert to warnings, errors and fatal situations.

During the startup and sometimes during operations, the system needs to obtain configuration details and provide control over the systems as a whole or to the individual components. This becomes even more important in a system that is distributed on a system of nodes. ¹⁾

• Typical configuration management data are Internet Protocol Address (IP Address), network ports, environment paths to files, and maximum usage limits for things like CPU and disk space.
• Typical commands are start, pause, resume and stop. Sometimes abort is also used to capture detailed dump files that can be used for analysis.

• There is sometimes a need for the efficient and sometimes automatic deployment of system resources such as web servers, application servers, DataBase Management System (DBMS), backups etc. This is useful when systems are made as a collection of other systems but is critical when managing distributed systems.
• In addition, this kind of management needed during first-time installation of systems (i.e., wizards) but also in deployed systems for applying patches, performance, and feature updates.