Users Guide

Planning Your IT Assistant Installation 17
Planning Your IT Assistant Installation
It is important to plan before installing Dell OpenManage™ IT Assistant. Depending on your
company's network management objectives, you may want to use IT Assistant primarily as a
discovery and status polling tool that quickly scans the network to retrieve managed system
information. On the other hand, you may want IT Assistant to only receive and forward alerts to
support personnel about problems on specific managed systems. Or maybe you want a combination
of both.
Decisions That You Make Before Installation
After you have determined your network size and network management objectives, you must then
make configuration decisions specific to your network management goals. If your network is well
established and you already have a well-defined IT Assistant management plan, many of these
decision-points may have already been addressed. Pre-installation planning includes choosing
the following:
• Event filtering and notification strategy
• Database that will be used to store IT Assistant data
• Hardware configuration
• Operating system
• Systems management protocol(s)
• Agents for your managed systems
NOTE: This document assumes that your systems are connected through a TCP/IP network and makes no
assumption regarding your network's complexity or whether you are already using any systems management
applications. In addition, no assumption is made regarding the type of systems and devices that exist on your
network. See "Installing, Uninstalling, and Upgrading IT Assistant" for all installation, uninstallation, and
upgrade procedures.