System Fault Management White Paper

• co-exists with other industry-standard solutions,
• enables simplified user management
The following sections discuss SFM in detail.
Overview
System Fault Management (SFM) is a collection of tools that are used to monitor the health of
HP servers running the HP-UX operating system. SFM includes providers that:
• monitor hardware components on a server
• predict a hardware fault
• notify users of the fault
• enable the system to automatically recover from the fault
The SFM providers retrieve information about a system's hardware devices (such as CPU,
memory, power supply, and cooling devices). These providers support the Cell Online Addition
and Replacement (OL*) feature. If new cells are added or if existing cells are removed from the
partition, these providers automatically detect the changes in configuration.
SFM enables users to perform a host of administrative tasks related to the events generated by
the providers. It integrates with HP Service Essentials Remote Support Pack, which facilitates
the analysis of errors that occur on a system, and helps troubleshoot those errors.
SFM enables a user to browse and customize an online dictionary of error metadata, including
the probable cause and recommended actions that help resolve system faults.
SFM is based on the Web-Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) standards. WBEM is a set of
management and internet standard technologies that was developed by the Distributed
Management Task Force (DMTF) to unify the management of enterprise computing environments.
Adhering to the WBEM standards enables SFM to function with similar products that comply
with WBEM.
SFM integrates with HP System Management Homepage (HP SMH) management application.
The functionalities of SFM can be used on a local system through the HP SMH user interface. In
addition, the functionalities of SFM can be used on the Central Management Server (CMS) through
the HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM), regardless of the supported operating system HP
SIM is running on.
Figure 1 illustrates the way details provided by SFM are displayed on HP SMH and HP SIM.
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