Getting Started With Dell OpenManage™ IT Assistant
Dell OpenManage™ IT Assistant
Version 8.0
User's Guide
You can use Dell OpenManage IT Assistant to monitor and manage systems on a local area network (LAN) or a wide area network (WAN), as well as identify the groups of systems that you want to manage remotely and consolidate your view of all systems, giving you a central launch point for managing these systems.
To be able to use IT Assistant, you will need to:
Plan your IT Assistant installation—It is important to plan because depending on your network management objectives, you may want to use IT Assistant:
as a discovery or status polling tool
to monitor performance of the various devices on your network and perform software updates
to only receive alerts about problems on your managed systems.
The Dell Systems Management Consoles CD. See the Dell OpenManage Installation and Security User's Guide for more information on the systems management software components.
The Dell Support website at support.dell.com.
To download IT Assistant, perform the following steps:
Connect to the Dell Support website at
support.dell.com.
In the search bar at the top right-hand corner, select
Technical Support and type OMI-50-MgmtStat-WIN_A00.exe as the search text.
NOTE: In the search text,
50 indicates the version of Dell OpenManage that packages the
management station components including IT Assistant.
Click Search.
Click the hyperlink that appears in the search results page. The
Drivers and Downloads
page appears.
Select OMI-50-MgmtStat-WIN_A00.exe. The download page for
OMI-50-MgmtStat-WIN_A00.exe appears.
Click Download Now and save the file to a location on the management station.
Management station is the system where IT Assistant is installed. A management station can be used to remotely manage one or more managed systems from a central location. The systems which are monitored by IT Assistant are referred to as managed system.
Ensure that you have the Windows SNMP Service installed before installing IT Assistant.
NOTE: All other prerequisites, except the Windows SNMP Service, can be installed using the
IT Assistant installer.
NOTE: Ensure that you have the operating system installationCD to install the SNMP components on the
management station. IT Assistant installation will fail if you do not have the SNMP components.
To install SNMP Service on the management station, perform the following steps:
Click the Start button. Point to
Settings→ Control Panel→ Add or Remove Programs→
Add/Remove Windows Components.
Select Management and Monitoring Tools.
When prompted for location to install, select the operating system CD that contains the
SNMP service components.
To configure the Windows SNMP Service on the management station, perform the following steps:
Right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop and select
Manage. The Computer Management
window appears.
Expand the Services and Applications tree.
Click Services. The services list is displayed in the right pane.
Locate and double-click SNMP Service. The
SNMP Service properties window is displayed.
Select the Security tab and click
Add under Accepted community names. The SNMP Service
Configuration window appears.
Select READ ONLY in the Community rights drop-down menu and type a case-sensitive string
in the Community name field.
NOTE: The
Community name string acts as a password for SNMP communications.
Click Add.
Select Accept SNMP packets from these hosts, and click
Add again.
In the SNMP Service Configuration
dialog box type localhost or the IP address of the
management station in Host name, IP or IPX address.
Click Add.
Click the Traps tab. Enter a case-sensitive string in the
Community name field and click Add
to list.
NOTE: You may enter the same string that you entered in
step 6.
Click Add under the Trap destinations field and type
localhost or the IP address of the
management station in Host name, IP or IPX address and click Add.
Click OK.
Right-click SNMP Service and select
Restart.
Select SNMP Trap Service and ensure that the status is displayed as
Started and the Startup
Type is Automatic.
To configure Windows SNMP Service on the managed system, perform the following steps:
Click the Start button. Point to
Settings→ Control Panel→ Add or Remove Programs→
Add/Remove Windows Components.
Select Management and Monitoring Tools.
When prompted for location to install, select the operating system CD that contains the SNMP
service components.
To configure the Windows SNMP Service on the management station, perform the following steps:
Right-click the My Computer icon on the desktop and select
Manage. The Computer
Management window appears.
Expand the Services and Applications tree.
Click Services. The services list is displayed in the right pane.
Locate and double-click SNMP Service. The
SNMP Service properties window is displayed.
Select the Security tab and click
Add under Accepted community names. The SNMP Service
Configuration window appears.
Select READ ONLY in the Community rights drop-down menu and type a case-sensitive string
in the Community name field.
NOTE: The
Community name string acts as a password for SNMP communications.
Click Add.
Select Accept SNMP packets from these hosts, and click
Add again.
In the SNMP Service Configuration
dialog box type localhost or the IP address of the
management station in Host name, IP or IPX address.
Click Add.
Click the Traps tab. Enter a case-sensitive string in the
Community name field and click
Add to list.
NOTE: You may enter the same string that you entered in
step 6.
Click Add under the Trap destinations field and type
localhost or the IP address of the
management station in Host name, IP or IPX address and click Add.
Click OK.
Right-click SNMP Service and select
Restart.
If you downloaded IT Assistant from the Dell Support website at support.dell.com, perform the following steps:
Double-click OMI-50-MgmtStat-WIN_A00.exe. This is a Winzip self-extractor package.
Specify a temporary folder to save the unzipped files.
Locate the temporary folder and double-click
setup.exe.
The installer first runs the Prerequisites Checker to check if all prerequisites are installed. If a prerequisite is not already installed, you can install it by clicking the appropriate hyperlink in the installer window and then following the instructions in the setup screens.
When all the prerequisites are installed, install IT Assistant by clicking Install, Modify, Repair or Remove Management Station and follow the setup screens.
After IT Assistant is installed, to run IT Assistant, do one of the following:
Double-click the IT Assistant icon on your desktop.
Open a supported Web browser and connect to the IT Assistant management station by typing:
<IT Assistant hostname>:<port number>
in the Address bar.
NOTE: The default IT Assistant port number is 2607.
If you access the IT Assistant UI from a system running supported Windows operating system that does not have a minimum supported Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version of 5.0 update 6, then IT Assistant would automatically start installation of JRE on that system.
NOTE: If the system that accesses the IT Assistant user interface has JRE version 5.0 update 1 to
update 5, then IT Assistant does not automatically update the JRE to version 5.0 update 6. In
this case, update the JRE version manually by pointing the browser to
https://<host name>:<port number>/jre-1_5_0_06-windows-i586-p.exe.
However, if you are accessing IT Assistant from a system running supported Linux operating system, perform the following steps:
Save the JRE installer (jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586-rpm.bin) in the location of your choice.
Extract the RPM and install JRE.
Create a soft link to this JRE in the plugins folder of the browser.
Configure IT Assistant to monitor your systems—IT Assistant can perform a variety of tasks for each system in your network. To be able to perform these tasks, configure IT Assistant to:
Collect inventory information about memory, processor, power supply, embedded devices, and software and firmware versions. For more information, see "Configuring Inventory Settings."
Define status polling settings to perform a power and connectivity health check for all discovered devices. This determines whether a device is operating normally, is in a non-normal state, or is powered down. For more information, see "Configuring Status Polling Settings."
Define a discovery range. A discovery range is a network segment (subnet, range of IP addresses on a subnet, individual IP addresses, or an individual host name) that IT Assistant uses to discover devices. For more information, see "Configuring Discovery Ranges."
