Managing Systems cannot always count on the systems they are

attempting to manage to have a functional operating system. The

Alert Standard Format specification defines a means of

"out-of-band" communications between a fully operational (OS

Present) Managing System and a Managed System that may not have an

operating system present (OS Absent). These out-of-band

communications may be in the form of Alerts or asynchronous

notifications sent from the Managed System to the Managing System.

Manged by the (D)istributed (M)anagement (T)ask (F)orce (DMTF) .