This section provides an overview of IBM® Systems Director, including supported hardware and software requirements, technical overview, web resources, and what is new in this release.

 

Accessibility
IBM strives to provide products with usable access for everyone, regardless of age or ability.


License information
Before deploying this product, ensure that you have the necessary licenses.


IBM Systems Director technical overview
IBM Systems Director is a platform-management foundation that streamlines the way you manage physical and virtual systems across a heterogeneous environment. By using industry standards, IBM Systems Director supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies across IBM and non-IBM x86 platforms.


Hardware and software requirements
IBM Systems Director has specific requirements for hardware and software. These requirements comprise the specified operating environment for IBM Systems Director. IBM Systems Director provides support for a wide range of hardware products, operating systems, and database applications.

Roadmap
This roadmap outlines the information resources available for IBM Systems Director Version 6.2.


Web resources
Listed here are the Web sites and information center topics that relate to IBM Systems Director.


I'm a 5.20 user. How do I use 6.x?
You know what you need to do in IBM Director 5.20, now use this section to learn how to do it in IBM Systems Director 6.x. After you become accustomed to this interface, you'll be able to see the status of your systems management environment quickly and more easily than ever before.


What's new - 6.2.x
Each version of IBM Systems Director provides a number of new features and enhancements.

 

IBM Systems Director technical overview

 

IBM® Systems Director is a platform-management foundation that streamlines the way you manage physical and virtual systems across a heterogeneous environment. By using industry standards, IBM Systems Director supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies across IBM and non-IBM x86 platforms.

Through a single user interface, IBM Systems Director provides consistent views for viewing managed systems, determining how these systems relate to one another, and identifying their statuses, thus helping to correlate technical resources with business needs. A set of common tasks included with IBM Systems Director provides many of the core capabilities required for basic management, which means instant out-of-the-box business value. These common tasks include discovery, inventory, configuration, system health, monitoring, updates, event notification, and automation across managed systems.

 

IBM Systems Director's Web and command-line interfaces provide a consistent interface focused on driving these common tasks and capabilities:

  • Discovering, navigating, and visualizing systems on the network with the detailed inventory and relationships to the other network resources
  • Notifying users of problems that occur on system and ability to drill down to the source of the problem
  • Notifying users when systems need updates and distributing and installing updates on a schedule
  • Analyzing real-time data for systems and setting critical thresholds that notify the administrator of emerging problems
  • Configuring settings of a single system and creating a configuration plan that can apply those settings to multiple systems
  • Updating installed plug-ins to add new features and function to the base capabilities
  • Managing the lifecycle of virtual resources

 

 

 

  

IBM Systems Director is designed to manage simple and complex environments, with multiple operating systems and platforms, up to 5 000 managed systems. It supports the management of a variety of IBM and non-IBM hardware driving common tasks through the following platform management plug-ins and virtual resources. The systems supported include:

IBM Power Systems™ management
  • HMC, IVM, and VIOS appliances
  • Power servers, Power blades, and LS41 and QS21 blade servers
  • AIX® , IBM i, and Linux on POWER® operating systems
 IBM BladeCenter® and System x® management
  • IBM BladeCenter chassis components, such as switch modules and server blades
  • System x systems and blade servers
  • VMWare, Microsoft Virtual Server (MSVS), and Xen virtual servers
  • Windows and Linux operating systems on System x
 IBM System z® management
  • z/VM hypervisor
  • Linux on System z operating system installed on z/VM® virtual servers
  • Linux on System z running on a partition without z/VM
IBM System Storage® management
  • Integrated RIA controller (such as LSI)
  • Network storage, such as DS3000, DS4000®, DS 5000, and DS6000™
  • Storage switches, such as IBM BladeCenter SAS, Brocade, QLogic, Nortel, and Cisco

IBM System Storage management

  • Get robust, comprehensive z/OS® storage management
  • IBM virtualization software and Tivoli® Storage Management

 

  

 

IBM Systems Director integrates with robust workgroup and enterprise management software from IBM (such as Tivoli® software), Computer Associates, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, NetIQ, and BMC Software.

IBM Systems Director components
IBM Systems Director includes IBM Systems Director Server and two operating-system agents: Common Agent and Platform Agent.


Manageable resource types
A resource is a generic term for anything that IBM Systems Director can manage. For example, systems, slots, cards, groups, and updates are all resources.


Manageable systems and system types
A system is one type of resource that IBM Systems Director manages. It is an operating-system-based or hardware-based resource that has an IP address and host name and can be discovered and managed by IBM Systems Director. From the Navigate Resource page in the IBM Systems Director Web interface, you can view the All Systems group to work with all discovered systems.

User interfaces
There are several methods for managing an IBM Systems Director environment: a Web interface and a command-line interface (smcli).


Base function and extensible plug-ins
Base plug-ins in IBM Systems Director provide core function to manage the full lifecycle of IBM servers, storage, network, and virtual servers. Plug-ins that provide advanced function or function tailored to a particular environment can be downloaded and installed on top of IBM Systems Director.


Upward integration
IBM Systems Director lets you to make the most of your existing enterprise management structure by upwardly integrating with many workgroup and enterprise-management products.