Glossary

This glossary includes terms and definitions for UpdateXpress System Pack Installer.

To view glossaries for IBM products, go to the Terminology website at www.ibm.com/ibm/terminology.

A

AMM
See Advanced Management Module.
Advanced Management Module
Advanced Management Module is a hardware unit that provides system-management functions for all the blade servers in a BladeCenterBladeCenter chassis.

B

Baseboard Management Controller
A controller that monitors system platform management events such as fan failure and temperature or voltage increases, and logs their occurrence.
Basic Input/Output System (BIOS)
The code that controls basic hardware operations, such as interactions with diskette drives, hard disk drives, and the keyboard.
BIOS
See Basic Input/Output System.

C

CLI
See Command-line interface.
Command-line interface
A type of computer interface in which the input command is a string of text characters.

D

deployment
Install of update packages.
device driver
A program that provides an interface between a specific device and the application program that uses the device.
Dynamic System Analysis
A systems management software product that collects and analyzes system information to aid in diagnosing system problems.

E

Ethernet
A packet-based networking technology for local area networks (LANs) that allows multiple access and handles contention by using Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD) as the access method. Ethernet is standardized in the IEEE 802.3 specification.
Extensible Markup Language (XML)
A standard metalanguage for defining markup languages that is based on Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML).

F

firmware
Proprietary code that is usually delivered as microcode as part of an operating system. Firmware is more efficient than software loaded from an alterable medium and more adaptable to change than pure hardware circuitry. An example of firmware is the Basic Input/Output System (BIOS) in read-only memory (ROM) on a PC system board.

G

GUI
See Graphical user interface.
Graphical user interface
A type of computer interface that presents a visual metaphor of a real-world scene, often of a desktop, by combining high-resolution graphics, pointing devices, menu bars and other menus, overlapping windows, icons and the object-action relationship.

I

inventory
To gather information about the system including installed hardware, device driver versions, and firmware levels.
Intelligent Peripheral Management Interface
A standard for controlling intelligent devices that monitor a system. It provides for dynamic discovery of sensors in the system and the ability to monitor the sensors and be informed when the sensor's values change or go outside certain boundaries.
IPMI
See Intelligent Peripheral Management Interface.

O

online update
An update package that can be applied through the native operating system.

P

prerequisite (pre-req)
A package that must be installed before another package.

U

update
An UpdateXpress System Pack consisting of an executable file and an XML description.
UpdateXpress System Pack
Integration-tested bundle of online firmware and driver updates for each System x and BladeCenter blade server.
UpdateXpress System Pack Installer
A software application that applies UpdateXpress System Pack updates to your system.

X

XML
See Extensible Markup Language.