Users Guide

Planning Your IT Assistant Installation 21
Factors That Affect Protocol Choice
Two factors affect protocol choice:
• The systems that you want to monitor
• Agents on the systems that you want to monitor
Systems That You Want to Monitor
Your network may consist of a combination of client and server systems, including portable computers,
desktops, workstations, and standalone servers such as print and file servers, server modules (or blades),
clustered servers, or hundreds of servers in densely populated racks. When planning for IT Assistant
installation, you will be surveying these systems, as well as any systems you plan to add to your network,
and determining which of these you want to monitor. During this assessment, you will be looking not
only at the number of client and server systems, but also at any systems management agents and
operating systems installed on these systems. The following section discusses the agents and
corresponding protocols that you may need to configure in IT Assistant. Correctly configuring these
protocols within IT Assistant is required to successfully manage your network.
Agents on the Systems That You Want to Monitor
The agents that you run on your managed systems may support a specific systems management protocol.
If you want to retain the agents that are already installed on these systems, you must continue to manage
them with their respective protocols. If the protocols used by certain agents are older, you can choose, in
most cases, to replace or upgrade these agents with those that support newer protocols. Table 2-3 lists a
number of agents and instrumentation that may be installed on Dell clients and servers. As long as the
corresponding protocol is enabled in IT Assistant, these systems can be discovered and managed on
your network.
Agent is a general term applied to the software components of systems management instrumentation. The
following table provides the management and alerting agents supported by IT Assistant. Degrees of
support vary among agents. For example, IT Assistant automatically discovers, displays, receives alerts
from, and can perform actions on the systems managed by Dell OpenManage Server Administrator, but
IT Assistant can only receive alerts from certain storage device agents.
NOTE: IT Assistant no longer supports the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) protocol. As a result, systems
running DMI using Dell OpenManage Server Agent 4.5.1 (and below) and OMCI 6.0 (and below) will not be
discovered by IT Assistant.
Table 2-3. Agents Supported by IT Assistant
Device Version(s) Supported Auto Discoverable Alerting
Dell PowerEdge™ Agents*
Server Administrator 1.0-2.2 Yes Yes
Server Agent 4.2-4.5 Yes Yes
Array Manager 2.5-3.7 Yes Yes