Planning and Configuring HP DCE 1.8

76 Chapter5
Configuring HP DCE Cells
Choosing a Cell Configuration Tool
Choosing a Cell Configuration Tool
HP DCE/9000 offers two cell configuration tools: a script-based tool,
dce_config, and a SAM-based tool, DCM (DCE Configuration Manager).
SAM (System Administration Manager) is an HP-UX menu-driven
system administration program that includes several other system
administration utilities, in addition to the DCE cell configuration
component.
DCM and dce_config
DCM is essentially a graphical front-end to dce_config. However, in
addition to the ease-of-use that a graphical interface confers, DCM has
some important functional differences that offer advantages over
running dce_config.
Advantages of DCM
Some of the advantages of DCM are:
• DCM has a template mode that allows you to create prototype
configurations that can be tested before actually creating them.
• DCM checks systems before performing the configuration.
• DCM prevents you from creating an invalid configuration.
• DCM allows you to configure all HP DCE/9000 Version 1.5, 1.7, and
1.8 systems in your cell remotely, from a single administrative node.
However, DCM does not configure and may not discover all aspects of
other vendors' system configuration.
• DCM remembers the last successful configuration. This information
is used only when the cell is "down" or critical DCE servers are not
running.
• DCM includes complete online documentation.
Limitations of DCM
While using DCM is completely compatible with using the dce_config
script, there are a few limitations to DCM, as follows.