Getting Started with HP Systems Insight Manager 7.0 or Greater in a Smaller Windows Environment

3
Introduction
HP Systems Insight Manager (SIM) is a unified server and storage management application that
assists in managing all HP servers, storage, and system hardware within your IT environment. Systems
Insight Manager brings enterprise-level benefits to IT environments ranging from small networks to
large corporate networks. Regardless of the size or complexity of your organization, Systems Insight
Manager can help you be more efficient and proactive in identifying, diagnosing, and fixing potential
issues for all of your HP hardware. For example, you can receive notification of drive issues that
enable you to replace the drive under warranty before it fails.
Systems Insight Manager ships on several HP platforms. Systems Insight Manager is included in the
HP-UX media releases, or it can be downloaded from http://www.hp.com/go/hpsim and
implemented quickly. The default management capabilities enable you to auto-discover systems,
monitor system health, deploy system software and firmware updates, and set up paging or e-mail
notifications for proactive notification of potential issues. Systems Insight Manager also includes a set
of fully enabled licenses for value-added options such as patch management and performance
management, which enables you to evaluate these additional capabilities on ProLiant systems. If you
are responsible for managing printers, storage, and clients in addition to servers, then Systems Insight
Manager provides additional value through consolidated access to specialized tools for managing
these systems.
Systems Insight Manager is easy to install and use. This paper guides you through the steps to install a
basic Systems Insight Manager configuration in a Microsoft® Windows® environment. For more
information about using Systems Insight Manager in other environments, visit the Systems Insight
Manager Information Library at:
http://www.hp.com/go/insightmanagement/sim/docs.
This paper also describes some of the advanced capabilities of Systems Insight Manager that you can
implement, based on the needs of your organization.
Systems Insight Manager highlights include:
• The only unified server and storage manager platform in the industry. Systems Insight Manager can
manage servers, storage, desktops, printers, and networking equipment and interfaces with
management tools for those systems.
• Can be installed and configured on typical Windows® systems in less than one hour.
• Includes a graphical user interface (GUI) is intuitive and easy to learn (no extensive training
needed.)
• Provides fault and inventory management for a small number of systems or thousands of systems.
By default, Systems Insight Manager provides unified server and storage management including fault,
inventory, and configuration management of all your HP servers and storage. Even if you have little or
no experience using management tools, Systems Insight Manager can help you immediately become
more proactive in detecting and solving system issues. Systems Insight Manager provides tangible
benefits in a wide range of IT environments as described in the following examples.
Example 1
Sam is an IT administrator in a small firm of lawyers. He manages 5 servers, 50 desktops, 2 storage
arrays, 10 printers, and miscellaneous networking systems. He does not currently use management
tools. If the lawyers have an issue with their systems, then they quickly pick up the phone and call
him. Sam does not think that his firm will invest in management tools, and he is not sure that he has
the time to learn the software. If Sam used Systems Insight Manager, he would receive an e-mail