Users Guide

20 Planning Your IT Assistant Installation
E-mail Notification Features
E-mail Alert Actions are useful in environments in which a system administrator does not want to use
the IT Assistant User Interface (UI) to visually monitor the status of managed systems. By coupling
e-mail alert actions with alert action filters, an administrator may identify a person to be electronically
notified when a specific system sends alerts to the IT Assistant network management station. This
individual can then choose to take the appropriate corrective action for that system. By configuring alert
filters with corresponding alert actions, constant monitoring of system status by IT Assistant becomes
unnecessary because e-mail notification is set up to occur whenever the event criteria are met.
Determining Systems Management Protocols
One of the most important decisions you will make in planning your IT Assistant installation is
determining the protocols you will use with IT Assistant. In general, your choice of protocols is
determined by the systems you want to monitor and the respective agent protocols they support. If the
systems you want to monitor have agents that use the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) or
Common Information Model (CIM) protocols, these must also be configured in IT Assistant.
Supported Protocols
IT Assistant supports two systems management protocols: SNMP and CIM. These protocols allow
communication between the IT Assistant network management station and the managed systems on
your network. For communication between IT Assistant and each managed system to occur successfully,
agents (instrumentation) must be installed on each of the systems you want to manage. For server
management, it is strongly recommended that you enable and configure both protocols.
NOTE: If the appropriate protocol is not configured correctly on the managed systems, IT Assistant will fail to
classify the systems properly, which may limit the manageability for those systems.
SNMP
In order to successfully perform an IT Assistant installation, you must install and enable the operating
system SNMP service.
CIM
CIM is used for managing both client and server systems. It can also be used for monitoring server
instrumentation in a network that does not allow SNMP management.