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Server Administrator Services

Dell OpenManage™ Server Administrator Version 1.9 Compatibility Guide

  Overview

  Descriptions of Server Administrator Services

  Available Services on Supported Operating Systems

Overview

Server Administrator has a modular architecture that allows system administrators to select and install the functions that are most needed in their particular IT environment. The services available to you vary from one operating system to another. The following sections describe the contribution of each service to your systems management capabilities.

Descriptions of Server Administrator Services

Each service provides a functionally related set of systems management tasks that you can use to manage your system.

Instrumentation Service

The Instrumentation Service provides rapid access to detailed fault and performance information gathered by industry-standard systems management agents and allows remote administration of monitored systems, including shutdown, start-up, and security.

Remote Access Service

The Remote Access Service provides a complete, remote system management solution for systems equipped with a remote access controller (RAC) solution. The Remote Access Service provides remote access to an inoperable system, allowing you to get the system up and running as quickly as possible. The Remote Access Service also provides alert notification when a system is down and allows you to remotely restart a system. Additionally, the Remote Access Service logs the probable cause of system crashes and saves the most recent crash screen.

Storage Management Service

The current release of Server Administrator provides two versions of the Storage Management Service: the basic Storage Management Service and the enhanced Storage Management Service.

The basic Storage Management Service is similar to the Storage Management Service (or Array Manager) provided in earlier releases of Server Administrator. In most cases, the basic Storage Management Service is installed by default when using Express Setup.

NOTE: The basic Storage Management Service is not available on systems running Red Hat® Linux operating systems.

NOTE: The Red Hat Linux operating system provides drivers for some of the RAID controllers listed in this section. However, when the basic Storage Management Service is installed on a Red Hat Linux operating system, the Linux drivers do not report data to the Storage Management Service.

The enhanced Storage Management Service provides additional features for configuring storage. In most cases, the enhanced Storage Management Service is installed using Custom Setup.

NOTE: The enhanced Storage Management Service is not available on systems running Novell® NetWare® operating systems.

See the Dell OpenManage Server Administrator User's Guide for more information on basic and enhanced Storage Management Service.

Diagnostic Service

The Diagnostic Service provides a suite of diagnostic programs that run locally on your system or remotely on a system connected to the network. The Diagnostic Service is engineered to diagnose problems on individual systems and to run concurrently with all other applications running on the system under test.

Update Service

The Update Service provides up-to-date version control and valuable change management tools for performing BIOS and firmware version updates on your local system. You can view the current version and perform updates for the system BIOS and firmware, RAID controller firmware and device drivers, RAC firmware, and other system component firmware and device drivers.

Logs

Server Administrator displays logs of commands issued to or by the system, monitored hardware events, POST events, and system alerts. You can view logs on the home page, print or save them as reports, and send them by e-mail to a designated service contact.

Available Services on Supported Operating Systems

Table 2-1 summarizes the services that are available for each supported operating system.

Table 2-1. Server Administrator Services Available With Supported Operating Systems 

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