User's Manual

Active System Manager Overview 1-1
Chapter 1
Active System Manager Overview
The Active System Manager solution sits at the center of the Active System, and simplifies infrastructure
configuration, collapses management tools, and drives automation and consistency. Through capabilities
such as template-based provisioning, automated configuration and infrastructure life cycle management,
the Active System Manager product enables IT to respond rapidly to business needs, maximize data center
efficiency and strengthen quality of IT service delivery.
Rapidly Respond to Business Needs
Active System Manager streamlines the complex and tedious task of infrastructure configuration. It enables
IT to quickly on-board new infrastructure or rapidly reconfigure existing infrastructure. This significantly
speeds time to production for new workloads or scaling of resources for existing workloads.
This dramatic simplification in infrastructure configuration is achieved through automated discovery and
inventory of bladed infrastructure, and centralization of infrastructure requirements in the form of
templates. Once defined, templates within Active System Manager can be repeatedly and consistently
utilized to streamline workload deployment.
Maximize Data Center Efficiency
Active System Manager empowers IT to achieve higher efficiencies through automation. By reducing, and
in most cases eliminating manual steps, IT organizations can free up time to focus on initiatives that make
a deeper impact on their organization and the business.
While automation is a cornerstone of efficiency, many IT organizations today are also encumbered with
multiple management consoles. Active System Manager offers an intuitive, single point of control for key
infrastructure configuration and management functions, enabling IT to minimize the number of consoles
that are needed on a regular basis.
Strengthen Quality of IT Service Delivery
Assuring service levels is always tricky; there are just too many variables that can impact service delivery.
Active System Manager addresses key factors that impact service levels, namely infrastructure
configuration errors, incorrect problem troubleshooting and slow recovery from failures.
Active System Manager dramatically improves accuracy of infrastructure configuration by reducing
manual touch points. If an unexpected error (such as a hardware fault) occurs or if business needs change,
Active System Manager enables rapid and smooth workload migration, thereby improving recovery time.
Active System Manager also enables better infrastructure management decisions through user workloads
and multi-level graphical views of infrastructure templates. These capabilities enable an IT administrator
to make better decisions up front and troubleshoot problems more effectively if they do occur, thereby
minimizing unexpected downtime and improving recovery time.