IBM Systems Director 6.1 FAQ
IBM Systems Director 6.1 Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document which answers questions like:
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General Questions
What is being announced ?
Today IBM is announcing our intention to deliver IBM® Systems Director 6.1 in 4Q/08. IBM Systems Director 6.1 is the next generation of IBM Director and is a platform management solution that streamlines the way physical and virtual systems are managed across a multi-system environment. IBM Systems Director provides the base function needed for modular extensible platform services to easily add advanced platform management functions as required. It is the basis for managing systems today and as clients move forward with virtualization and management of their data center as part of cloud computing.
When will IBM Systems Director be available?
IBMs intention is to deliver IBM Systems Director 6.1 in 4Q/08. Additional information on the product including price structures will be available at the product’s general availability.
What's new with IBM Systems Director?
IBM Systems Director 6.1 is the next generation platform management solution that streamlines the way physical and virtual systems are managed across a multi-system environment. IBM Systems Director provides the base function needed for platform modular extensible platform services foundation to easily add advanced platform management functions as required. Through an intuitive, point-and-click user interface, IBM Systems Director provides consistent views for visualizing managed systems that determines how these systems relate to one another while identifying their individual status which helps to quickly identify problems and limit the business impact. The IBM Systems Director solution includes inventory of hardware features and settings, system health and status notification, and system firmware and driver update management. The industry-standard foundation enables multi-systems hardware support and works with a variety of operating systems and network protocols. Key features of IBM Systems Director 6.1:
• Integrates IBM’s best-of-breed virtualization capabilities to provide new and radically improved ways to simplify the management of physical and virtual platform resources
• Unifies the monitoring and control of IBM systems, delivering a consistent look and feel for common management tasks.
• Delivers multi-system support across IBM Power, System x, System z, and IBM Storage systems
• Provides an extendable and modular foundation to advance the core systems management capabilities with additional plug-ins
• Enables seamless integration of IBM systems with the total infrastructure, and upward integration with enterprise service management solutions such as IBM Tivoli
• Delivers a consistent and unified platform management foundation that facilitates reduced training costs.
• Manages non-IBM x86-based systems through a dedicated agent
How is IBM Systems Director 6.1 Different from IBM Director 5.2?
What is new is that we have redesigned a complex product to make it easy to use (intuitive / point and click) to further simplify management of a virtualized datacenter. This also provides a more stable/reliable product that is easy to maintain and can be used as a single system platform manager (consolidating multiple tools into one) or across multiple systems giving a single simplified view across many. This is why we call IBM Systems Director 6.1 the "next generation of platform management." This does not necessarily translate into performance savings, but savings in people time to manage (understand, add/delete and fix) the environment, which the new ITG Analysts Paper states can be as much as 23% in management savings. Virtualization management was an add-on in IBM® Director 5.2 and is now integrated into IBM Systems Director 6.1. Also, we have enhanced integration points Systems Director has with Tivoli in order to provide rich hardware information and capabilities into a business and services context. In an effort to help customers attack their NEDC issues, IBM Systems Director is still no charge (for IBM systems)
What is the value that IBM Systems Director 6.1 brings to clients?
IBM Systems Director 6.1 enables improved system availability, helps lower IT costs and enables customers to get started faster and be more productive with an open integrated toolset. IBM Systems Director 6.1 provides the following value to customers
• Simplifies operations by offering monitoring and event management capabilities
• Simplifies IT management of multiple industry leading hypervisors through the use of a single tool
• Reduces the complexity of virtualization through understanding and communicating the relationship of physical servers to virtual servers (i.e. VMware)
• Reduces the time associated with analyzing unavailable systems by providing a topology graph views to show relationships between virtual and physical systems and their manageable components to simplify troubleshooting
• Enhances productivity through a simplified easy to use web-based user interface for management of virtual and physical systems.
• Protects IT investments by utilizing an open, standards-based design that facilitates the management of IBM multi-systems environments and select non-IBM systems
• Seamlessly integrates with enterprise management products from IBM Tivoli and other software vendors
• Improves IT efficiency by easily integrating with single system platform management products for AIX, IBM i,, System z and System x
• Reduces IT costs for training and maintaining multiple tools by providing one easy to use interface for management of virtual and physical systems
• Reduces systems maintenance window churn by supporting currency for physical and virtual servers as well as operating systems
• Reduces human error by providing automated support of VMWare’s VMotion based upon physical hardware status information
How can Systems Director assist in deployment of virtualization?
Virtualization has completely transformed enterprise-class IT. Virtualized solutions unlock technological resources, such as processing power and storage, from specific hardware, redelivering them in a fluid form that can be allocated dynamically to business goals and strategies in real time. Next-generation virtualized infrastructures, however, require next-generation management such as IBM Systems Director 6.1. With IBM Systems Director, the underlying technical differences across different hardware and software virtual solutions are abstracted out, allowing administrators to manage the overall virtualized infrastructure as a unified whole. Furthermore, through its next-generation feature set—extensible via a plug-in architecture—IBM Systems Director can help you accomplish more through virtualization than ever before.
Basic support for common lifecycle management tasks used throughout the virtual infrastructure is significantly simplified and enhanced with Virtualization Manager as part of IBM Systems Director. In IBM Systems Director 6.1 Virtualization Manager includes support for virtualized environments managed by wholly different server virtualization environments. These include Hardware Management Console (HMC), Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM), Microsoft Virtual Server, VMware and Xen virtualization. Some additional basic discovery and health management is supported for z/VM virtualization. As a result of this cross-solution management consolidation, you can visualize and control both the physical and virtual resources from a single user interface.
Features and benefits of Virtualization Manager in IBM Systems Director 6.1 include:
• Consolidated management for different virtualized environments and tools, including Hardware Management Console (HMC), Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM), Microsoft® Virtual Server, VMware and Xen virtualization.
• A topology viewer to relate the connection between physical and virtual resources, which can vary dynamically across time.
• Tracking of alerts and system status for virtual resources and their resources to easily diagnose problems affecting virtual resources.
• Creation of automation plans based on events and actions from virtual and physical resources, such as relocating a virtual server based on critical hardware alerts.
• Lifecycle management tasks, such as creating additional virtual servers, editing virtual server resources or relocating virtual servers to alternate physical hosts.
How can IBM Systems Director 6.1 assist in saving energy?
IBM Systems Director allows you to extend the base platform with additional plug-ins, that are separately installed. By following design guidelines, a plug-in of this type can deliver key new functionalities while retaining a consistent user experience with the base offering by taking advantage of the common tasks and capabilities. One such plug-in is IBM® Systems Director Active Energy Manager. Active Energy Manager measures, monitors and manages the energy components built into IBM systems, enabling a cross-platform management solution. Active Energy Manager extends the scope of energy management to include facility providers, thus enabling a more complete view of energy consumption within the data center.
Does this leverage my customer's current investment in IBM® Director 5.20?
IBM Systems Director 6.1 enables a smooth transition for customers using IBM Director 5.20. The IBM Systems Director 6.1 Common Agent can optionally be used to replace the previous 5.x Level 2 Agent (though Director will continue to work with it, as well). This option will appeal to many administrators because the new agent supports a richer set of features and subagent tasks. A forthcoming migration tool imports customer data from previous Director releases so it can be used with IBM Systems Director 6.1.
IBM Systems Director Jumpstart services from IBM will be enhanced to provide clients with the expertise and experience of STG Lab Services to speed up the analysis and deployment of IBM Systems Director 6.1 and can assist existing IBM Director customers migrate to the new release. In addition, key skills are transferred to IT and facility management staffs for effective management of systems. Additional information will be available at product availability.
How does IBM Systems Director 6.1 leverage open standards?
IBM Systems Director 6.1 helps spur cross-system management consistency by representing agent information in a consistent manner. Regardless of the type of agent or protocol configured on an operating system, the user interface delivers a single system view of the operating system and its related resources, thereby consolidating system health information and also depicting common tasks, such as inventory and updates. In version 6.1, the following agent types are supported: No Director Agent, Platform Agent, and Common Agent.
The Platform Agent is well-suited to environments in which a smaller agent footprint is desired, yet one in which administrators wish to retain a broad array of features. It provides a subset of Common Agent functions used to communicate with and administer the managed system, including hardware alerts and status information.
IBM’s ongoing commitment to improve interoperability through open standards, rather than through proprietary technologies, is evidenced by Platform Agent. This agent provides discovery, authentication and management entirely through industry standards, such as the Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) interfaces, which were developed by a consortium of major hardware and software vendors (including IBM) called the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF). The CIM provides the framework upon which a system can be managed by using common building blocks rather than proprietary software. If a device is CIM-compliant, software that is also CIM-compliant, such as Systems Director, can more easily manage the device.
This open standard commitment enables clients to include a larger scope of systems within their managed infrastructure.
What endpoints can be managed with IBM Systems Director 6.1 ?
In general current models of Power systems, Systems x, Blades/BladeCenter and System z servers as well as Systems storage and non-IBM systems are supported as end points with IBM Systems Director 6.1.
For a complete list of supported systems and operating environments, visit the IBM Systems Director website at www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/
Which servers can host the Systems Director server?
The IBM Systems Director 6.1 management server is available on IBM servers running Linux on x86, Linux on System z, Linux on Power, AIX, as well as Windows operating environments, and can manage other operating systems such as IBM i.
For a complete list of supported systems and operating environments, visit the IBM Systems Director website at www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/
How does the new Systems Director improve integration with Tivoli suite?
IBM Systems Director 6.1 has been designed to work with Tivoli products to provide a total systems management solution that is easily managed by our customers while eliminating redundancy across both product sets.
The IBM Systems Director console builds on industry-standard technologies (AJAX, Web 2.0, JSR 168 portlets) and leverages existing components to provide a powerful and extensible Web- based console. Because it’s Web-based, the console is exceptionally easy to administer, and can be accessed from any supported browser. It allows you to carry out many essential platform tasks spanning a broad range of resources, such as storage management tools, IBM Tivoli system management solutions and embedded consoles included with systems like BladeCenter, HMC, Service Processors and various operating systems.
The IBM Systems Director Common Agent is a cross compatible, single agent runtime shared by IBM systems and Tivoli products, such as Tivoli Provisioning Manager, that reduces agent footprint, supports shared credentials and drives discovery, inventory and other common services
What's the difference between Systems Director and Tivoli? How do they work together?
IBM management solutions – from rich platform management provided by Systems Director to enterprise and service management from Tivoli – is the most comprehensive in the industry and delivers the solutions you need to help drive greater IT efficiencies and improved business performance.
• System Director’s focus is on IBM hardware platform management, health and configuration to help deliver maximum availability for your IBM systems. It consists of a set of industry leading tools that provide very granular platform management information - for both physical and virtual resources - which can be integrated into Tivoli products, providing them with richer hardware metrics.
• Tivoli offers industry leading service management by providing customers the integrated visibility, control & automation across the service lifecycle that are needed to innovate and achieve business objectives.
• The Tivoli software portfolio of products provides a set of management capabilities which are broader in scope than Systems Director and are more scalable for enterprise-wide operations. Tivoli products also go beyond platform management and provide advanced, automated tools for managing software applications, networks, storage and how IT resources, performance and usage fit and with overall business policies and goals as part of service management.
• A key point of this announcement are new integration points and joint offerings between Systems Director and Tivoli which provides a smooth bridge from Systems Director to full cross-enterprise service management capabilities using Tivoli software solutions. By integrating Systems Director with select Tivoli products, Systems Director's rich platform management capabilities and hardware data can be brought into a broader business service context. This enhances troubleshooting, reporting, energy efficiency, and capacity planning that can help customers deliver highly available, critical business services that drive their business results.
• The Systems Director toolset and Tivoli Software are complementary and can be used either individually or together to deliver industry leading end-to-end IT management.
How does IBM Systems Director 6.1 interact with Tivoli?
IBM Systems Director 6.1 has been designed to work with Tivoli products to provide a total systems management solution that is easily managed by our customers while eliminating redundancy across both product sets.
The IBM Systems Director console builds on industry-standard technologies (AJAX, Web 2.0, JSR 168 portlets) and leverages existing components to provide a powerful and extensible Web- based console. Because it’s Web-based, the console is exceptionally easy to administer, and can be accessed from any supported browser. It allows you to carry out many essential platform tasks spanning a broad range of resources, such as storage management tools, IBM Tivoli system management solutions and embedded consoles included with systems like BladeCenter, HMC, Service Processors and various operating systems.
The IBM Systems Director Common Agent is a cross compatible, single agent runtime shared by IBM systems and Tivoli products, such as Tivoli Provisioning Manager, that reduces agent footprint, supports shared credentials and drives discovery, inventory and other common services
How is storage supported in IBM Systems Director 6.1?
A key strength of IBM Systems Director is the power it gives IT managers to manage not only virtual servers, but also virtual storage—a fundamentally different class of technology that must nevertheless be integrated with virtual server management for best business results. By transforming both processing power and storage into fluid resources that can be dynamically allocated to business services in a prioritized manner, IT can help organizations to achieve business goals more efficiently and cost effectively.
IBM Systems Director’s Storage Management plug-in helps fulfill this exciting possibility via lifecycle management of storage systems, including discovery, health and status monitoring, configuration, updates and virtualization. It also provides a Welcome Page summary view and platform-specific functions. Some of its capabilities include:
• Seamless integration of the Storage Configuration Manager (SCM) features for managing integrated RAID Controllers, BladeCenter’s SAS Module and BC-S RAID SAS Module.
• Integration of embedded management interfaces for DS3000, DS4000 and DS6000, and TPC LE to provide management of SVC, DS8000 and ESS storage devices.
• Simplified discovery and management scenarios for storage systems that require the SIM-S proxy agent (SNIA Storage Management Interface Specification) to be managed.
• Standards-based storage implementations to reduce confusion, ease vendor adoption and broaden the storage systems supported by Systems Director.
• Automation plans based on events and actions from storage resources.
• Support for IBM System Storage™ Area Network products.
What plug-ins are supported by IBM Systems Director 6.1 and when are they supported?
IBM Systems Director allows you to extend the base platform with additional plug-ins, separately installed. By following design guidelines, a plug-in of this type can deliver key new functionalities while retaining a consistent user experience with the base offering by taking advantage of the common tasks and capabilities. IBM intends to the deliver the following Systems Director plug-ins.
IBM intends to:
• Deliver an updated version of IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager as a plug-in to IBM Systems Director in 1Q09
• Provide a migration tool, in 1Q09, to facilitate customer migrations from IBM Director 5.20.
• Provide a virtual server image management plug-in to IBM Systems Director in 2009.
• IBM intends to deliver an updated version of IBM Blade Center Open Fabric Manager as a plug-in to IBM Systems Director in 2009
• Availability functions as part of IBM Systems Director in 2009
• Provide a capacity planning plug-in to IBM Systems Director in 2009
• Tivoli® Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment (TPMfOSD) tool which enables a customer to provision an operating system via a library of disk images to supported systems on the network.
Product previews provide insight into IBM plans and directions. General availability, prices, ordering information, and terms and conditions will be provided when the product is announced.
For a complete list of Systems Director plug-ins and their availability, visit the IBM Systems Director website at www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/.
What IBM Systems and/or operating systems are supported by IBM Systems Director 6.1?
In general current models of Power systems, Systems x, Blades/BladeCenter and System z servers as well as Systems storage and non-IBM systems are supported with IBM Systems Director 6.1. IBM Systems Director 6.1 is available on IBM servers running Linux on x86, Linux on System z, Linux on Power, AIX, as well as Windows operating environments, and can manage other operating systems such as IBM i.
For a complete list of supported systems and operating environments, visit the IBM Systems Director website at www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/
Are agents required on every system that is managed by IBM Systems Director 6.1?
No, although the type of agent may vary based upon the support required for the managed end-point. IBM Systems Director is designed to facilitate the best possible utilization of both storage-based and server-based physical and virtual resources throughout the infrastructure. In order to accomplish this task, the solution combines three main components: a single web-based console, a central management server and agents (either common or platform-based). In version 6.1, the following agent types are supported: Common Agent, Platform Agent, and No Director Agent.
• The IBM Systems Director 6.1 Common Agent can optionally be used to replace the previous 5.x Level 2 Agent (though Director will continue to work with it, as well). This option will appeal to many administrators because the new agent supports a richer set of features and subagent tasks.
• The Platform Agent is well-suited to environments in which a smaller agent footprint is desired, yet one in which administrators wish to retain a broad array of features. It provides a subset of Common Agent functions used to communicate with and administer the managed system, including hardware alerts and status information. This agent provides discovery, authentication and management entirely through industry standards, such as the Common Information Model (CIM) and Web-based Enterprise Management (WBEM) interfaces, which were developed by a consortium of major hardware and software vendors (including IBM) called the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF).
• With No Director Agent support, IBM Systems Director also provides a set of manageability functions for managed systems that have neither the Common Agent nor the Platform Agent installed. These systems with no Director Agent are best for environments that require very small footprints and are used for specific tasks, such as one-time inventory collection, firmware and driver updates and remote deployment. Systems without a Director Agent must support the Secure Shell (SSH), Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM) protocol or SNMP in order for Systems Director to support them.
What IBM Systems and/or operating systems are supported by IBM Systems Director 6.1?
In general current models of Power systems, Systems x, Blades/BladeCenter and System z servers as well as Systems storage and non-IBM systems are supported with IBM Systems Director 6.1. IBM Systems Director 6.1 is available on IBM servers running Linux on x86, Linux on System z, Linux on Power, AIX, as well as Windows operating environments, and can manage other operating systems such as IBM i.
For a complete list of supported systems and operating environments, visit the IBM Systems Director website at www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/
What non-IBM systems does IBM Systems Director 6.1 support?
The IBM Systems Director 6.1 management server is not supported on non-IBM hardware – this is a change from pervious releases of IBM Director. IBM Systems Director 6.1 agents are supported on non-IBM x86-compatible systems running Linux and/or Windows. The IBM Systems Director Agent provides basic system-management capabilities on non-IBM Intel-based or AMD-based systems with SMBIOS 2.1 or later that meet the Intel® Wired for Management (WfM) 2.0 specification. These functions and features include File Transfer, Inventory (Software), Power Management, Process Management, Remote Control (VNC or Remote Desktop), Remote Session, Resource Monitors, SNMP events for SNMP Agent and SNMP Browser.
The IBM Systems Director license agreement enables Power Systems, System z and System x customers, up to a maximum of 20 free non-IBM x86 Agent licenses for no charge. Additional Agent licenses, for a list price of $59/server continue to be available from IBM.com after having purchased. Power Systems and System z customers will be able to order service and support for their non-IBM x86 machines in the same manner they currently order this for IBM platforms.
How does IBM Systems Director 6.1 compare to HP Insight Manager?
IBM Systems Director 6.1 competes with HPs Systems Insight Manager (SIM) while providing a broader scope of coverage and superior functionality across systems than what HP offers. HPs SIM focuses on HPs UNX and Intel servers while providing minimal support for non-HP systems. IBM Systems Director not only focuses on UNX and Intel servers, but also includes mainframe systems as well as support for storage and non-IBM systems. Both IBM and HP provide compatibility support for systems they do not sell while supporting more in-depth functions for their own systems. On a function by function basis IBM System Director delivers improved benefits in the following areas.
• Failure prediction and resolution for IBM systems
• New easy to use web interface technology which is not available with HP SIM
• IBM Systems Director software health checking will automatically indicate when software needs to be updated
• Easy-to-use wizard builds Event Automation Plans
• Single agent install/remove (one package contains all agents)
• Virtualization management delivered with the IBM Systems Director base (don't have to buy a plug-in)
• Systems Director has better grouping capability because more functions can operate on a group, such as deployment of updates for a group of systems
• Dashboard views are more granular and allow customization
• Topology navigation for viewing and analyzing relationships between managed resources
• Explore file system of a managed system
• Explore services that are running on a managed system
• Context-based task execution
• Acquire appropriate updates only (based on software inventory), HP acquires all updates for the platform
IBM Systems Director provides simplified management which can mean faster time-to-solution in the event of a problem; higher return on investment; a tailored fit between features, functions and the specific needs of your organization; and an accelerated, more flexible response to changing business goals and strategies.
What implementation services are available to help client install IBM Systems Director 6.1?
IBM Systems Director Jumpstart is a service that provides the client with the expertise and experience of STG Lab Services to speed up the analysis and deployment of IBM Systems Director and can assist existing IBM Director customers migrate to the new release. In addition, key skills are transferred to IT and facility management staffs for effective management of systems. More information can be obtained at the following website:
http://www.ibm.com/systems/services/labservices/pdf/stgls_aem_ij_lr.pdf
What is the cost of IBM Systems Director 6.1?
IBM Systems Director management server and agents are available on IBM Systems as a
“no-charge” feature of the system and can be downloaded through the IBM Systems Director website at:
www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/
Service and support is orderable through the respective platform ordering mechanisms or in the case of Systems x through GTS service offerings.
The IBM Systems Director license agreement enables Power Systems, System z and System x customers, up to a maximum of 20 free non-IBM x86 Agent licenses for no charge. Additional non-IBM x86 agent licenses for servers will continue to be available from IBM.com for a list price of $59/server. Power Systems and System z customers will be able to order service and support for their non-IBM x86 machines in the same manner they currently order this for IBM platforms.
Additional information on the product including price structures will be available at the product's general availability.
Where can I find more information on IBM Systems Director 6.1?
More information can be found at the IBM Systems Director website at:
www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/.
BRAND SPECIFIC QUESTIONS
System x
How does Systems Director support my VMware environment?
Systems Director provides a rich set of functionality for a VMware virtualized x86 environment. The topology view helps customers understand and manage the relationships between physical and virtual resources. The Virtualization Manager function included in Systems Director can perform lifecycle tasks in an ESX environment, such as creating or deleting new VMs. Systems Director can link to VMware VirtualCenter (ESX and ESXi) to surface advanced VMware technologies such as VMotion within Systems Director and to include such functions in event action plans to help automate the response to system alerts.
How does Systems Director support my Microsoft virtualization environment?
Systems Director provides lifecycle management for Microsoft Virtual Server environments. For the new Hyper-V environment, System Director will provide lifecycle support in a future release. Since Hyper-V is built on Windows 2008, the current version of Systems Director will provide management of physical resources for servers running a Hyper-V environment.
How is service and support purchased for a System x or BladeCenter server?
Support is purchased from GTS through a ServicePac or SupportLine agreement. Support of Systems Director requires a support contract for the system(s) running Systems Director server (ServicePac support for a System x server running IBM Systems Director server software includes support for IBM Systems Director agent software running on managed endpoints.)
There is mention of how Systems Director 6.1 works with the previous 5.20 versions of IBM Director. Can it interoperate with old versions?
IBM intends to expand Systems Director 6.1 agent support to include the 5.10 L2 agents.
Source: The FAQ has been provided to us by IBM, IBM Systems Director
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