HP Systems Insight Manager 5.2 Update 2 Technical Reference Guide

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Product architecture

HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) leverages a distributed architecture that is divided into three types of

systems:

Central Management Server

(CMS),

managed systems

, and web-browser clients.

The CMS with the managed systems together are called the

HP SIM management domain

Central management server

Each management domain has a single CMS. The CMS is the

system

in the management domain that

executes the HP SIM software and initiates all central operations within the domain. In addition to the HP

SIM software, the CMS maintains a

database

for storage of persistent objects that can reside locally or on

a separate system. Typically, applications for the

multiple-system aware

(MSA) tools also reside on the CMS.

However, these applications are not required to reside on the CMS. They can reside anywhere on the

network.

Because the CMS is a system within the management environment, it manages itself as part of the domain.

You can add the CMS as a managed system within another management domain if you want to manage

the domain using a separate CMS.

Managed systems

Systems that comprise a management domain are called

managed systems

. A system can be any device

on the network that can communicate with HP SIM, including servers, desktops, laptops, printers, workstations,

hubs,

storage systems

, storage area networks (SANs), and routers. In most cases, these devices have an IP

address associated with them. A managed system can be managed by more than one CMS, if desired.

Managed systems to be managed must have one or more

management agents

installed. There is a wide

variety of agents, such as the ProLiant Insight Management Agents based on

SNMP

, or the

Windows

Management Instrumentation

(WMI) for Windows systems, , or

Web-Based Enterprise Management

(WBEM)

providers, and System Fault Management providers for HP-UX. These agents provide management information

and alerts (indications) to the CMS. The

SSH

agent (service) then enables the HP SIM CMS to log into the

managed system to execute commands through scripts.

System collections

System collections provide a way to group systems in the HP SIM database. A collection can be used to

filter systems that share common attributes, such as operating system or hardware type. System collections

can also be arbitrary collections of systems. Systems can belong to one or more system collections. Many

default shared system collections are provided, and you can create your own shared and private collections.

Using system collections, you can, in a single step, perform a task on every system in a system collection.

See “Shared system collections” for a complete list of all shared system collections.

Web-browser clients

HP SIM can be accessed from any supported browser client. The network client can be part of the management

domain. However, you must be running a compatible browser to access the

GUI

or an

SSH

client application

to securely access the

CLI

. Access to the web server on the CMS can be restricted to specific IP address

ranges for specific users.