Management and Monitoring Services

The management and monitoring services features of ZENworks for Servers 3 are broken into several components for installation. Each component includes applications and system files that will be copied to specified servers. The following subsections discuss the changes for each component added to a server.

Management Site Services

Management site services enable you to perform SNMP trap monitoring using any SNMP management console to receive and interpret SNMP traps on the systems and to view status and inventory information about each of your servers. The management site server contains the databases and the services software that are responsible for collecting the SNMP trap information and placing it into the database. Additionally, the management site server runs the discovery and the reporting software to provide information on the servers. Management site services are made up of the components discussed in the following subsections.

Alarm Management

Alarm Manager is a software module in Java that collects the alarms that are sent to it from the various server agents across the network. The responsibility of the Alarm Manager is to take the SNMP alarms that are sent from the various server agents, to categorize them, and to place them into the database on the site server.

Installing this component places the agent on the server and adds a line to execute the NMA5.NCF (a script file to load the alarm management agent) to the AUTOEXEC.NCF, so the agent will be loaded when the server is started. This agent is the host for the SNMP messages. For more detailed information about alarm management, refer to Chapter 11, "Using ZENworks for Servers Alarm Management."

Databases

Several portions of the database for the management services are stored on the site server. An atlas or mapping database keeps track of the topology maps. In addition, entries in the database keep track of the alarms that the Alarm Manager stores.

This service installs an empty Sybase database, \zenworks\mms\db\mw.db, onto the server and prepares it to receive topology, logging, and inventory information about the network.

Role-Based Services

In addition to the objects that are stored in the tree, some code in the system checks your authentication object and sees what roles you have in the system. Based on these roles, specific SQL statements are used to retrieve only specific items in the database. This effectively limits the scope of the devices that individuals can manage.

Additionally, selected functions can be given to these roles to enable users to perform management functions. For additional information on role-based services, see Chapter 8, "Understanding ZENworks for Servers 3 Management Services."

Autodiscovery

As part of the installation, the NetExplorer discovery modules, discussed in Chapter 9, "Preparing and Using ZENworks for Servers 3 Network Discovery," are stored on the management site server. These modules launch various NLM and Java components to perform the discovery of all the devices on the network. After the full discovery of the network is done and stored in the database, the discovery can be placed into automatic mode. Automatic mode enables the system to monitor the network to keep the topology and system up to date. To discover more information about autodiscovery, see Chapter 9.

MIB Tools

Several MIB tools are also stored on the management site server. These tools are used to create and compile MIBs for inclusion into the monitoring and alarming services. MIBs are management information base text files that define what certain SNMP traps are and how to resolve them into English. This enables the ZENworks for Servers 3 system to understand any SNMP device and decipher its communication and data information. For additional information on the MIB tools, see Chapter 8, "Understanding ZENworks for Servers 3 Management Services."

Server Management

Server management is achieved by placing an agent onto the server. This agent samples various components of the operating system and device and then, based on the administered information in the fault management system, it sends SNMP traps to the Alarm Manager to notify the system when a reading is out of alignment. Additionally, this agent takes measurements of the system when requested and saves that information for use in trending and remote monitoring of the servers.

This agent also responds to SNMP messages that are sent to it from the management console to perform various tasks, including sending data for immediate views or modifying configuration parameters on the server.

Traffic Analysis

Selecting Traffic Analysis places a traffic agent on the server. This agent monitors the packets sent on its segment and records information about the system's performance. Traditionally, you should have only a single traffic agent on a segment. The agent can be placed on either NetWare or Windows NT/2000 servers.

Inventory Management

Inventory Management enables you to perform hardware and software scanning of your servers and has this information stored in the inventory database. This information can then be retrieved via ConsoleOne views on the screen or through reports that the system has performed. You can perform inventory management for both NetWare and Windows NT/2000 servers. Inventory Management comprises the elements discussed in the following two subsections.

Inventory Agent

The inventory agent, ZENInvServer, runs either as a Java process on a NetWare server or as a service on a Windows NT/2000 server. The inventory agent performs both the hardware and software scanning of the server. An additional agent is installed on Windows systems that, when contacted by the management system, performs the scan. When the scanning is completed, the information is stored in the inventory database.

Database

The inventory database is located with the management site services and is stored in the zeninv.db database file. This database is also loaded with the Sybase system on the management site server by adding the zeninv.db entry into the mgmtdbs.ncf file, which loads the Sybase engine. As the inventory agents collect data from the servers, their information is stored in the database. A report of the inventory information can be requested via the ConsoleOne snap-in.

Remote Management

ZENworks for Servers 3 provides a Java remote console program. This program runs from ConsoleOne and enables you to perform a remote console, much like RCONSOLEJ. This requires that the agent for remote console be running on the servers you want to control.

ConsoleOne Snap-ins

Managing your servers and the alarms associated with them is performed via ConsoleOne. For the system to properly manage the eDirectory objects, and to interface with the topology and logging database, several ConsoleOne snap-ins, such as atlas.jar, must be loaded. These snap-ins are stored in the ConsoleOne snapins\mw directory at installation.