System information

Advanced Functions
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5.6.2 Deployment Overview
RAIDGuard Central consists of the following three software components: RAIDGuard Central Server (RGC Server),
RAIDGuard Central Agent (RGC Agent), and RAIDGuard Central GUI (RGC GUI). RGC Server is the main software
component of RAIDGuard Central, responsible for RAID system monitoring, event consolidation, and event notification.
RGC Server communicates with RGC Agents, which are installed on computers in different networks (one RGC Agent for
one network), to discover RAID systems and receive events. RGC Server also provides information to the RGC GUI,
which may be launched either locally on the same computer of RGC Server or remotely with web browsers (RGC Server
is embedded with a web server). When you launch the web GUI of a RAID system on RGC GUI, the RGC Server and
RGC Agent will forward the packets between the remote web browser and the web GUI server on the RAID system.
The illustration below shows how RGC software components can be deployed to build a centralized RAID management
and monitoring infrastructure. A computer is chosen to execute RGC Server, and RGC Agents are installed to different
networks for communicating with the RAID systems in each network. Note that RGC Server alone cannot communicate
with RAID systems, you need to install also an RGC Agent to a computer (may be the same as the one of RGC Server)
in the same network of RGC Server, if there are RAID systems in that network.
You may follow the steps below to deploy the RGC components:
1. Install RAID systems and connect them to the networks.
2. Install one RGC Server and conduct the necessary configurations (you need to start web server if you would like to
use RGC GUI).
3. Install RGC Agents (one for each network segment).
4. Launch RGC GUI (you will need to enter a password).
5. Use RGC GUI to add RGC Agents by keying the IP address of the RGC Agents.
6. Use RGC GUI to discover the RAID systems for each RGC Agent.
7. Use RGC GUI to register the discovered RAID systems (you need to present the administrator’s password of the
RAID systems for registration).
8. Configure MSN accounts for event notification (optional).
Now you may freely read the status and events of all registered RAID systems by RGC GUI.
When there are new RAID systems installed to a network with an RGC Agent, you need to use RGC to rescan the
network to discover and register the new RAID systems. When there are new RGC Agents, you will need to add these
RGC Agents to your RGC Server by RGC GUI.
If RAID systems are attached to a private network with virtual IP address, the computer running RGC Agent for this
network must have a real IP address such that RGC Server can communicate with the RGC Agent. This can be done by
creating a mapping in the gateway of the network and assign a real IP address to the computer.
Note that when there is constant heavy network traffic, the communication between RGC components would be
influenced and the operations would become slow. When the network connection between RGC Server and RGC Agents
is down, the status and the latest events of the RAID systems managed by the RGC Agents will not be visible. But after
the network connection is recovered, the RGC Server will synchronize its local event database with the event logs on the
RAID systems. For easing the management, you may also consider dividing the RAID systems into two or more domains,
and install one RGC Server for each domain. But note that one RGC Agent can be accessed by only one RGC Server.
To avoid discontinued monitoring because of the failure at the monitoring sites, you may set up two RGC Servers to
monitor the same set of RAID systems. The monitoring tasks can still continue when one of the RGC Servers is down.
Host
Server
RGC Server/Agent
Host3
Agent
Host1
Agent
Host2
Agent
RAID Systems
RAID Systems
RAID Systems
RAID Systems
Figure 5-30 Deployment example of RAIDGuard Central components