| SCM allows you to replicate tasks over multiple systems. Tasks that have traditionally been performed individually on many systems can now be performed across multiple systems in a cluster managed by SCM. This is particularly relevent to Virtual Partitions since you have one computer system with more than one Virtual Partition running on it. In most cases you'll want to have SCM control of these Virtual Partitions since they're running on the same computer system even though you have multiple instances of HP-UX. You can take a command or tool that runs on an individual system, such as the find or df command, dispatch it to run on multiple systems or Virtual Partitions, and collect the results for review in SCM. More advanced tools that were designed to run on multiple systems, such as Ignite-UX, can also be run in the same manner using SCM. Specific tasks can be assigned to specific individuals with SCM, thus creating a role-based environment. This obviates the need for root access to systems because specific management activities are assigned to specific users on specific nodes. These user roles provide great flexibility in defining the tasks that individual users can perform. You can define the systems and/or Virtual Partitions of which an SCM cluster is composed. The Central Management Server (CMS) in an SCM environment is the focal point in which management takes place. Agents on the managed nodes communicate with CMS to perform management functions. The CMS could be one of your Virtual Partitions. SCM is available on the applications media of 11i and loaded with Software Distributor like any other application. You'll want to load SCM on onel of the HP-UX 11i vPar instances for your CMS. The overview section at the end of this chapter describes the details of setting up and running SCM. | 
