HP Systems Insight Manager 7.2 Technical Reference Guide

◦ Virtual partitions (vPars)
◦ Hard partitions (nPars)
• Snapshot comparisons
HP SIM enables you to compare configuration snapshots of up to four different servers, or
compare configuration snapshots of a single server over a period of time. You can use snapshot
comparisons to save a picture of a standard configuration for comparisons to other systems.
• Federated CMS Search
Federated CMS Search is a web-based HP SIM plug-in that allows you to search quickly across
a number of Systems Insight Manager CMS systems.
Product architecture
HP SIM leverages a distributed architecture that has three types of systems: CMS, managed systems,
and web-browser clients.
The CMS with the managed systems together are called the HP SIM management domain.
Central management server
Each management domain has a single CMS. The CMS is the system in the management domain
that executes the HP SIM software and initiates all central operations within the domain. In addition
to the HP SIM software, the CMS maintains a database for storage of persistent objects that can
reside locally or on a separate system. Typically, applications for the MSA tools also reside on the
CMS. However, these applications are not required to reside on the CMS. They can reside anywhere
on the network.
Because the CMS is a system within the management environment, it manages itself as part of the
domain. You can add the CMS as a managed system within another management domain if you
want to manage the domain using a separate CMS.
Managed systems
Systems that comprise a management domain are called managed systems. A system can be any
device on the network that can communicate with HP SIM, including servers, desktops, laptops,
printers, workstations, hubs, storage systems, SANs, and routers. In most cases, these devices have
an IP address associated with them. A managed system can be managed by more than one CMS,
if desired.
Managed systems to be managed must have one or more Insight Management Advisor installed.
There is a wide variety of agents, such as the HP Insight Management Agents based on SNMP,
or the WMI for Windows systems, or WBEM providers, and System Fault Management providers
for HP-UX. These agents provide management information and alerts (indications) to the CMS. The
SSH agent (service) then enables the HP SIM CMS to log in to the managed system to execute
commands through scripts.
Web-browser clients
You can access HP SIM from any supported browser client. The network client can be part of the
management domain. However, you must run a compatible browser to access the GUI or an SSH
client application to securely access the CLI. You can restrict access to the web server on the CMS
to specific IP address ranges for specific users.
Security
SSL is used between the browser and HP SIM to ensure data integrity and privacy. An integral
part of SSL is a certificate, which is a public document used to identify the HP SIM server. When
24 Product overview