32 IBM CSM to IBM Systems Director Transformation Guide
2.10 Transformation as a project and future impacts
The transformation from CSM to IBM Systems Director will result in major changes in the way
you manage your infrastructure. We cannot avoid thinking about it as a project, which requires
proper planning activities not only for the system administration personnel but for other teams
who have the responsibility to keep important applications running.
Having a CSM cluster is not only about installing and monitoring the operating system. The
way you manage that operating system has serious implications on the applications that are
running on those systems. Changing the core management infrastructure, when you
transform it from CSM to IBM Systems Director, may result in planned outages when you are
performing the transformation and most likely will result in changes in the way the systems
are administered after transformation is complete.
In the following section, we discuss some of the nontechnical aspects of such a major change
in your infrastructure. We make appropriate references when we see a technical issue that is
documented in this or other published materials.
The transformation itself can be seen as a project, but it will result in changes how you can do
your daily work after that is finished, so we split this section into two parts.
2.10.1 Transformation project
We provide two scenarios with detailed guidance for the technical steps and provide further
technical explanations for the most important steps of the transformation process. Refer to
Chapter 3, “Transformation scenarios” on page 39.
In this section, we concentrate on the broader view.
Preparation
Planning and preparation can take longer than the actual implementation steps of a project
and is the most important aspect of any successful project.
Oracle
Database
? Version 9.2
? Version 10g release 1
(10.1.0.3 or later)
? Version 10g release 2
? Version 11g release 2
Notes:
? Oracle Cluster
configuration is not
currently supported.
? A 64-bit client is required to
access an Oracle
Database database from
64-bit IBM Systems
Director Server.
Local or
remote
Local or
remote
Local or
remote
Database Supported database
versions
AIX Linux Windows
Chapter 2. Planning and preparation 33
Preparation involves not only technical requirements, but non-technical issues as well:
? Review your management infrastructure together with IBM Systems Director
documentation to understand all aspects of your infrastructure, and the parts that will be
replaced by the new management infrastructure.
– Choose what you can replace easily and what kind of development activities you will
need in case something is not available or is provided differently in IBM Systems
Director.
– Choose the required plug-ins of IBM Systems Director at the onset so the
implementation considerations can be made during initial installation.
We suggest a minimal implementation at first for simplicity and then add features and
plug-ins later when you are used to the new environment.
For example, immediate cost saving results can be achieved using Active Energy
Manager, but this could require additional investments which were not in the initial
responsibility of the server management team.
– Choose the database application that will be used by IBM Systems Director.
If we start with the embedded Apache Derby with a small infrastructure, it could be
hard to move to IBM DB2 later, when Systems Director is already managing hundreds
of systems. For more details, see “Product databases for IBM Systems Director” on
page 30.
? Prepare for the fact that you may need additional system resources while you are
preparing and doing the transformation compared to daily operations under CSM.
Because IBM Systems Director can provide more features, using those features can raise
the resource requirements even after transformation is complete.
? Provide education of new technologies implemented with IBM Systems Director.
This is probably the most important step, because the differences between CSM and
Systems Director are substantial. These differences are not only in the technical details,
but administrators and other involved parties have to think differently when they are
working with IBM Systems Director compared to CSM.
IBM Systems Director has many new features and is a cross-platform management tool
that is developed to manage today’s cloud-based, virtualized infrastructures.
The database used by IBM Systems Director is simply managed and does not require
heavy maintenance activities. But it is there, so it is better to know something about it.
Education should provide not only theoretical classroom knowledge, but hands-on
workshops and test systems available before, during and after the transformation project
provide the greatest benefit.
High-level education on IBM Systems Director features and requirements has to be
provided for non-technical personnel also, to understand why some changes in processes
are needed.
? Prior to production, test everything you want to implement; not only the systems
management side of the infrastructure. Think about the application- and process-related
consequences also.
? Choose your path of transformation, which can be any combination of the following:
– CSM and IBM Systems Director on the same management infrastructure.
– Build a new management infrastructure for IBM Systems Director.
– Set up one or more NIM servers on separate machines or one on the same server
where the IBM Systems Director Server is installed.
34 IBM CSM to IBM Systems Director Transformation Guide
– Implement a hierarchical management infrastructure or have only one management
server for all managed systems; this includes NIM server placement as well.
– Move all CSM nodes into one maintenance window, move in groups or move one by
one.
? Prepare for the worst
The management infrastructure should prevent service loss and be able to restore the
service to normal operation in the allotted time based on the Service Level Agreement
(SLA).
– Any utilized monitoring capabilities provided by CSM and other related applications
require a smooth transformation to minimize the time when an important service can
go down without notification.
– A backup infrastructure has to be available in case an unforeseen restoration is
required.
This is not only about the capability to restore the recently changed components of
your management infrastructure, but in many cases CSM is connected to NIM servers
that provide the AIX operating system restoration capability in your managed
infrastructure. See the section about OS deployment for more details in 4.5, “OS
deployment” on page 105.
? Review security rules appropriate for systems management
– Managing remote servers requires authentication and authorization, which are often
strictly determined by corporate rules and standards.
IBM Systems Director, like CSM, provides tools that can cause problems if used by
inexperienced, or even malicious, personnel for infrastructure changes and/or data
acquisition.
Start with minimal authorization for new administrators in IBM Systems Director and
extend in a controlled manner.
See security sections in this publication and other documentation for more technical
information and incorporate the requirements into the processes. Refer to 4.4,
“Security” on page 95.
– Prepare for integrating the existing post install customization procedures into IBM
Systems Director.
Probably the most important of these are the security hardening steps which have to
be accomplished after each server installation. Using cloning of already hardened
operating systems is one method, for which IBM Systems Director and VMControl can
provide assistance. See more details about Storage Copy Services capabilities in IBM
System Storage DS Storage Manager Copy Services Guide SG24-7822.
The IBM Systems Director plug-in AIX Profile Manager can help with post install
customization and security hardening.
? Review processes related to systems management and start detailed planning early in the
transformation because changes such as this can take time to incorporate in a large
enterprise.
– IBM Systems Director works with virtualized environments, which may need changes
in hardware and operating system requirements handling and lifecycle management.
– Centralized user ID management and security handling of shared user IDs should be
reviewed.
– IBM Systems Director provides centralized update notification, and possibly
installation, for AIX. This has to be incorporated into the existing processes in a
company.
Chapter 2. Planning and preparation 35
– Status of all managed systems can be displayed in the GUI and additional monitoring
can be set up as explained in 4.1, “Monitoring of resources” on page 74, but this can
overlap with existing monitoring tools in a company.
Typically any newly managed system or operating system has to be registered for
monitoring as part of the activation process. Because IBM Systems Director can
provide status and health monitoring by default, this process could require changes.
Transformation from CSM to Systems Director
If you did a good job in the planning, then the actual implementation part of the project should
be easy. Just do what was documented and prepared for.
Of course, there are always some things that can go wrong, so listed below are some of those
risks:
? Removal of old management software and installation of new management software on
managed systems
After removal of the management software from a single CSM node, that node is no longer
managed, at least not managed by CSM. This sounds obvious but can cause problems if
the planning and the schedule of the project were incorrect.
Without management software you could lose the following functions:
– Restoration of a managed server’s operating system
To avoid this, be sure that at least one NIM server and the backups are still available,
so you can use manual restore procedures.
– Monitoring
Inform the monitoring team, if they are separate from the implementors, that some of
the monitored features and processes will be stopped or completely removed, so they
should not open problem tickets for those.
Without monitoring you cannot see if there is a non-obvious failure that can result in
missing the SLA, so use other tools that are still available (such as IBM Tivoli
Monitoring or the HMC GUI) to keep an eye on the systems.
– Remote commands and access to managed nodes or devices
Use SSH or HMC options for manual tasks. If the time without a new remote command
facility is too long, then modification of automated scripts could be necessary.
When CSM functions are the only path used by administrators to remotely access
HMCs or managed nodes, then this will not be available until IBM Systems Director is
configured to manage the server. Set up individual authentication and authorization to
avoid a situation where an administrator cannot log in and perform any urgent activities
after removing an HMC from CSM.
– Hardware control
The physical servers are still managed by the HMCs, so you can use them directly to
control the hardware if needed.
? Security
Prepare the security environment first to avoid accidental or malicious modifications of the
managed systems.
Create groups of users and assign only the minimal roles that are required. Users with
unlimited rights can view and control much more of the IT infrastructure than was possible
with CSM because of the extended capabilities of IBM Systems Director.
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