Users Guide

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Overview
Active System Manager(ASM) is Dell’s unified management product that provides a comprehensive
infrastructure and workload automation solution for IT administrators and teams. ASM simplifies and
automates the management of heterogeneous environments enabling IT to respond more rapidly to
dynamic business needs.
IT organizations today are often burdened by complex data centers that contain a mix of technologies
from different vendors and cumbersome operational tasks for delivering services while managing the
underlying infrastructure. These tasks are typically performed through multiple management consoles for
different physical and virtual resources, which can dramatically slow down service deployment.
The new Active System Manager 7.5 features an enhanced user interface that provides an intuitive, end-
to-end infrastructure and workload automation experience through a unified console. This speeds up
workload delivery and streamlines infrastructure management, enabling IT organizations to accelerate
service delivery and time to value for customers.
What can you do with ASM?
ASM provides capabilities and benefits that allow organizations to:
• Accelerate IT service delivery by automating and centralizing key operational functions like workload
and infrastructure deployment.
• Free up IT staff to focus on higher priority projects by dramatically reducing manual steps and human
touch points.
• Use infrastructure more fully and efficiently by pooling available server, storage and network
resources that you can schedule for future use or allocate on demand.
• Standardize workload delivery processes to ensure accuracy and consistency for initial deployment,
while maintaining the flexibility to scale workloads according to business needs.
• Maximize investments in both Dell and Non-Dell IT resources with support for heterogeneous IT
environments.
How is ASM different?
ASM helps you realize these benefits through a unique set of features and capabilities designed for IT
administrators. These capabilities include:
• Template-based provisioning and orchestration — Simplify IT service delivery with a centralized
approach for capturing and applying workload-specific configuration and best practices; plus step-
by-step definition and execution of tasks across the workload lifecycle.
• Infrastructure lifecycle management — Easily manage the entire infrastructure lifecycle with:
– Fast discovery, inventory, and initial configuration of assets.
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