IBM Systems Director 6.3 and IBM i

The 6.3 release of IBM Systems Director became available last December. While there probably aren't many i shops out there using Systems Director yet, the 6.3 release provides several enhancements that make the product much more interesting for i environments.

The blog “Manage i with IBM Systems Director” reviewed what you could do to manage IBM i with IBM Systems Director 6.1. Review that blog for the main support since much of that information is still applicable if you want to get started with Systems Director. (But please, only consider using IBM Systems Director 6.3).

Of course there are software updates that you need to install on i to enable the latest features. It does require some PTFs to the base operating system, as well as fixes for the 5770-UME product. The software technical document “CIM and SLP-related PTFs” summarizes the PTFs that are needed. In addition, to get the complete functionality, you will need the 6.3 CAS agent for i, which is available on the IBM Systems Director download site. At some point in the not-too-distant future, I'll write another blog describing in more detail the underlying support, aka “agents,” that is required on IBM i to enable IBM Systems Director management. For now, refer to the information in the IBM Systems Director 6.3 Information Center on IBM i resources. 

Once you have the requisite fixes and underlying agents started, you can begin to take full advantage of the IBM Systems Director 6.3 features to manage i.

Below are some of the major enhancements with IBM Systems Director 6.3 for i: 

• With the IBM i 6.3 CAS agent installed, you can collect additional inventory information for i partitions. The additional inventory includes additional networking information and information on the cache battery status for your IOAs. Yes, another way to Display the Status of Your IOA Cache Batteries!
• The Update Manager has been enhanced to support additional PTF groups. In addition, you can now use Systems Director to install single PTFs, although it cannot be done through the graphical user interface; you need to use the Systems Director command line interface to acquire the specific update. (This support for single PTFs was actually added to IBM Systems Director 6.2.1).
• The 5770-UME enhancements enable improved monitoring of i through Systems Director. Systems Director 6.3 now has “IBM i Monitors” on the main monitors view, and you can easily drill down to see all the monitors available with the UME enablement. The following two screen captures show examples of these monitoring enhancements.

 

• Finally, the VMControl 2.4 plug-in now supports provisioning IBM i partitions. Steve Will blogged about this topic last October when he wrote about Image Management for IBM i. With VMControl, you can capture your base IBM i image and then use that base image to deploy new IBM i partitions.

For anyone that has used IBM Systems Director 6.2 with IBM i, it is definitely worth taking a look at what Systems Director 6.3 provides. And if you have not yet investigated Systems Director, 6.3 may provide you with enough features to look more closely at what Systems Director can do.

 

 

 

Comments

[Aaron Bartell]

Hi Dawn,

Do you know how one can tell the version that is actively installed? I just logged into a V7R1 machine with what I believe are the latest updates and I don't see any place that declares the version.

I also looked in GO LICPGM opt 10 and didn't see IBM Systems Director Navigator mentioned. Does it get budled with another licensed program?

I think the biggest beef that shops have with Systems Director Navigator is that it is incredibly slow. Slow to the point that sometimes pages don't come up after minutes of waiting. And sometimes the pages will error out and state that the error log should be checked, but I have no idea where the error log is (it's not in the QHTTPSVR sub system jobs that I've seen).

In short, unless one of the bullet points of enhancements has to do with significant speed improvements then I don't think many will be interested.

Windows is an inferior operating system that has a very easy to use graphical interface. IBM i is a superior operating system that has a graphical interface still trying to be average. By my calendar IBM Systems Director Navigator has been available for four years as of March 21 2012 and is still struggling with fundamental things like speed. The group in charge of IBM Systems Director Navigator development need to pony up so they represent well the innards of IBM i under the covers - right now they do not.

Maybe I am unique in my perception. Do others reading this feel this tool needs some serious performance enhancements?

AaronBartell.com

[Dawn]

Hi Aaron,
I'm going to reply to your post in multiple responses...

First, refer to my prior blog "i Can... Direct the Use of Navigator? Or is that Navigate the Use of Director?"
http://ibmsystemsmag.blogs.com/i_can/2010/03/i-can-direct-the-use-of-navigator-or-is-that-navigate-the-use-of-director.html

This week's blog is talking about IBM Systems Director, and from your post, you are asking about IBM Systems Director Navigator. I know! It's easy to get confused...

Dawn

[Dawn]

Aaron,

Regarding the concern about performance of IBM Systems Director Navigator - the browser-based web console for IBM i....

IBM does not officially publish configuration recommendations, however, we do have some general recommendations from practical experience.

For a single-user environment (only one user logged on to Systems Director Navigator at one time) -
.5 processor, uncapped
2 GB memory in the *BASE pool (more is better)
3 disk arms

For a multi-user environment -
2 processors, uncapped
6-8 GB memory in the *BASE pool (more is better)
6 disk arms

In addition, make sure that your networking configuration is correct, in particular any DNS lookups. DNS issues can make result in poor performance.

If you have the above requirements and still suffer poor performance, please report the issue through IBM Support.

I'm aware of many clients that are successfully using Systems Director Navigator with fine response time.

Dawn

[Aaron Bartell]

>For a single-user environment (only one user logged on to Systems Director Navigator at one time)

There's another server operating system (Windows) that limits the number of users that can be logged in at any given time. It's quite unfortunate that IBM i has gone backwards in this regard.

AaronBartell.com

[Dawn May]

Hi Aaron,
I don't think IBM i has gone backwards in this regard - it's just that to support multiple users with the Systems Director Navigator web console requires more system resources in terms of processors, memory, and disk.
Dawn

[Aaron Bartell]

I don't know what to say, Dawn.

With an entry level Power7 520 and the 5250 interface I can have 10's of people on the machine doing IBM System Director Nav equivalent things all at the same time (i.e. WRKSPLF, WRKUSRPRF, WRKACTJOB, WRKLNK, CFGTCP, etc) with zero speed issues.

Awhile back when I first installed Zend Server I ran through their tutorials and was really surprised by the one that displayed my active jobs. When I clicked on the link/app to display my active jobs in the browser it was almost an instantaneous response. Originally I had thought "maybe it is just more time consuming to produce that type of result to the web because of how IBM system level API's need to be called". Evidently this isn't the case, because if PHP can do it then so should the *integrated* web server.

AaronBartell.com