Operational View

The operational view describes the tasks, activities, procedures, information exchanges/flows from the perspective of the real-world operations stakeholders (i.e., systems administrators, maintenance, facility engineers, system managers, and instrument scientists) [B5]. The operational view is not specific to a particular resource (e.g., HFIR CG-1D instrument or OLCF Summit), but reflects certain organizational constraints and procedures that influence the operational procedures and depend on other aspects, such as the Physical View.

The operational view captures the perspective of people, machines, tasks, policies for the system (i.e., primarily aspects associated with certain User Roles, such as maintainer/operator and administrator. It includes:

  • Creating the networking connections for control, work, and data flows

  • Monitoring metrics for information exchange, which will differ depending on the type of information and entities, i.e., human/human exchanges (email), device/device (packets). This also include monitoring of system resources, e.g., resource utilization, load imbalances, etc. (cf: Data View for metrics data)

  • Hierarchy of responsibilities (system/network/instrument administrators)

  • Policies and procedures (e.g., steps for adding new hardware to a lab space, steps for adding (and restricting) users to (from) resources)

The Operational View is not concerned with:

  • Details of messaging formats for control, work, and data flows, with the exception for reliability and security monitoring and diagnostics

  • Details of an individual user application

The primary stakeholders for the operational view are maintainer/operators and administrators (see User Roles). which enable users to take advantage of the resources made available by their owners. While owners are concerned with having their resources used effectively by users, maintainer/operators and administrators facilitate this capability. A single real-world person may fulfill one or many of roles. For example, a system software developer may also perform administration for the resources being managed. These roles may also be split among different individuals. A key distinction is the level of details and operational responsibilities.

For example, Fig. 69 depicts a high-level operational view of two different ORNL facilities, CNMS and OLCF, which are administered and operated by different individuals. These different Operators and Administrators can only see a section of INTERSECT (aka, their own facility and/or resource).

High-level diagram to assist operational view of system

Fig. 69 High-level diagram to assist operational view of system; showing different facility domains that will be managed by different Operators and Administrators depending on the resource and Facility.