IBM Hardware Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Version 2.0

With the IBM^® Hardware Management Pack for Microsoft^® System Center Operations Manager 2007, Version 2.0 installed on the Operations Manager Server, you can use Operations Manager to discover and manage IBM System x™ and BladeCenter^® x86 systems that have installed either IBM Director Core Services (Level 1) or IBM Director Agent (Level 2).

Install a supported version of IBM Director Core Services or IBM Director Agent on every IBM system that you intend to manage.

Install Operations Manager 2007 on the management server; then install IBM Hardware Management Pack, V2.0 on the server. Use the Computer and Device Management Wizard of the Operations Manager to choose to manage Windows^® systems running on an IBM System x system or an BladeCenter blade server. After selecting a system to be managed, Operations Manager pushes its Operations Manager Agent onto the managed system, along with management packs that specifically target the type of system, such as the IBM Hardware Management Pack that targets an IBM System x or BladeCenter x86 system. The Operations Manager Agent and the management packs begin communicating with the IBM Director Agent on the system and communicating across the network to the Operations Manager Server.

With IBM Hardware Management Pack, V2.0, the Operations Manager can monitor and manage an IBM System x or BladeCenter x86 system, as well as more granular targets within a managed computer system, such as its operating system, its applications, its network adapters, and its subcomponents, such as its cooling fan.

The Operations Manager monitors and manages the health of a management target. The health is measured in four categories:

Availability
Configuration
Performance
Security

The Operations Manager also provides the ability to create management packs and groups of systems, applications, and health dependencies as aggregate targets. Once defined, you can roll up all the indicators for an aggregate target, or drill down when the aggregate indicator shows a problem that requires examining the health of individual components.

If you find a problem, you can look in the history databases to see if it is a recurring problem. You can also use the knowledge provided in IBM Hardware Management Pack, V2.0 to learn the recommended solution to a problem.

When you install IBM Hardware Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Version 2.0, the following Operations Manager functions are enhanced for IBM System x and BladeCenter x86 systems:

Health explorer view: Examines the health state of IBM Director Level-1 and Level-2 enabled systems at a component level in a hierarchical view of availability, configuration, performance, and security.
Diagram view: Shows inner organization views of IBM System x systems.
Events view: Captures events that occur on specific or aggregate targets of IBM Director Level-1 and Level-2 enabled systems.
Active alerts view: Lists all alert notifications for specific or aggregate targets of IBM Director Level-1 and Level-2 enabled systems.

Note: These management functions are supported on System x and BladeCenter x86 systems running Windows. They are not supported on System i™, System p™, and System z™ systems.

If you intend to monitor the health of an entire BladeCenter chassis unit, you can install the separate IBM BladeCenter Chassis Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Version 1.0.2.

Major features

Major features of the IBM Hardware Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, Version 2.0 include:

Monitoring the health of IBM systems and system components
Creating groups of IBM systems and system components for monitoring at a high level
Automatically restoring the health state of a component from an error state to a healthy state when an error is resolved

IBM Hardware Management Pack, V2.0 monitors all of the hardware health states that are critical for continuous functioning of your IBM systems. To help you focus on events that might need your attention, the Hardware Management Pack reports errors for all critical health conditions that might impact the system.