This chapter and the following sections discuss the changes that occur on the server when you install various feature sets of ZENworks for Servers 3. The hardware and software requirements of the servers are discussed in Chapter 2, “Installing ZENworks for Servers 3.” It is often important to understand the changes that occur on your systems to make good evaluations on where to install the system and to better know how the changes impact the service your servers provide.
The management and monitoring services features of ZENworks for Servers 3 are broken into several components for installation. Each component includes applications and system files that will be copied to specified servers. The following subsections discuss the changes for each component added to a server.
Management site services enable you to perform SNMP trap monitoring—using any SNMP management console to receive and interpret SNMP traps—on the systems and to view status and inventory information about each of your servers. The management site server contains the databases and the services software that are responsible for collecting the SNMP trap information and placing it into the database. Additionally, the management site server runs the discovery and the reporting software to provide information on the servers. Management site services are made up of the components discussed in the following subsections.
Alarm Manager is a software module in Java that collects the alarms that are sent to it from the various server agents across the network. The responsibility of the Alarm Manager is to take the SNMP alarms that are sent from the various server agents, to categorize them, and to place them into the database on the site server.
Installing this component places the agent on the server and adds a line to execute the NMA5.NCF (a script file to load the alarm management agent) to the AUTOEXEC.NCF, so the agent will be loaded when the server is started. This agent is the host for the SNMP messages. For more detailed information about alarm management, refer to Chapter 11, “Using ZENworks for Servers Alarm Management.”
Several portions of the database for the management services are stored on the site server. An atlas or mapping database keeps track of the topology maps. In addition, entries in the database keep track of the alarms that the Alarm Manager stores.
This service installs an empty Sybase database, zenworksmmsdbmw.db, onto the server and prepares it to receive topology, logging, and inventory information about the network.
In addition to the objects that are stored in the tree, some code in the system checks your authentication object and sees what roles you have in the system. Based on these roles, specific SQL statements are used to retrieve only specific items in the database. This effectively limits the scope of the devices that individuals can manage.
Additionally, selected functions can be given to these roles to enable users to perform management functions. For additional information on role-based services, see Chapter 8, “Understanding ZENworks for Servers 3 Management Services.”
As part of the installation, the NetExplorer discovery modules, discussed in Chapter 9, “Preparing and Using ZENworks for Servers 3 Network Discovery,” are stored on the management site server. These modules launch various NLM and Java components to perform the discovery of all the devices on the network. After the full discovery of the network is done and stored in the database, the discovery can be placed into automatic mode. Automatic mode enables the system to monitor the network to keep the topology and system up to date. To discover more information about autodiscovery, see Chapter 9.
Several MIB tools are also stored on the management site server. These tools are used to create and compile MIBs for inclusion into the monitoring and alarming services. MIBs are management information base text files that define what certain SNMP traps are and how to resolve them into English. This enables the ZENworks for Servers 3 system to understand any SNMP device and decipher its communication and data information. For additional information on the MIB tools, see Chapter 8, “Understanding ZENworks for Servers 3 Management Services.”
Server management is achieved by placing an agent onto the server. This agent samples various components of the operating system and device and then, based on the administered information in the fault management system, it sends SNMP traps to the Alarm Manager to notify the system when a reading is out of alignment. Additionally, this agent takes measurements of the system when requested and saves that information for use in trending and remote monitoring of the servers.
This agent also responds to SNMP messages that are sent to it from the management console to perform various tasks, including sending data for immediate views or modifying configuration parameters on the server.
Selecting Traffic Analysis places a traffic agent on the server. This agent monitors the packets sent on its segment and records information about the system's performance. Traditionally, you should have only a single traffic agent on a segment. The agent can be placed on either NetWare or Windows NT/2000 servers.
Inventory Management enables you to perform hardware and software scanning of your servers and has this information stored in the inventory database. This information can then be retrieved via ConsoleOne views on the screen or through reports that the system has performed. You can perform inventory management for both NetWare and Windows NT/2000 servers. Inventory Management comprises the elements discussed in the following two subsections.
The inventory agent, ZENInvServer, runs either as a Java process on a NetWare server or as a service on a Windows NT/2000 server. The inventory agent performs both the hardware and software scanning of the server. An additional agent is installed on Windows systems that, when contacted by the management system, performs the scan. When the scanning is completed, the information is stored in the inventory database.
The inventory database is located with the management site services and is stored in the zeninv.db database file. This database is also loaded with the Sybase system on the management site server by adding the zeninv.db entry into the mgmtdbs.ncf file, which loads the Sybase engine. As the inventory agents collect data from the servers, their information is stored in the database. A report of the inventory information can be requested via the ConsoleOne snap-in.
ZENworks for Servers 3 provides a Java remote console program. This program runs from ConsoleOne and enables you to perform a remote console, much like RCONSOLEJ. This requires that the agent for remote console be running on the servers you want to control.
Managing your servers and the alarms associated with them is performed via ConsoleOne. For the system to properly manage the eDirectory objects, and to interface with the topology and logging database, several ConsoleOne snap-ins, such as atlas.jar, must be loaded. These snap-ins are stored in the ConsoleOne snapinsmw directory at installation.
Policy-enabled server management services enable you to manage the server via policies in eDirectory. Additionally, these services enable you to activate the electronic distribution capabilities of ZENworks for Servers. With TED, you can transmit files across the network and have them placed on any server in the network that has a TED subscriber agent loaded. The policy-enabled server management services are made from the following components.
This set of software from the system enables you to manage your NetWare, Windows NT/2000, Linux, and Solaris servers from eDirectory. These features include the capability to create policies in a server policy package and then have these policies applied to the servers that are associated with the policy package.
The server software packages represent a set of software files that are constructed into bundles of server software (NLMs, EXEs and so forth) that can be distributed with TED and then installed on the NetWare, Windows NT/2000, Linux, and Solaris servers. The package enables such controls as unloading and loading NLMs or services prior to installation.
For more information on server policies see Chapter 5. A more detailed discussion of server software packages is found in Chapter 7.
The following sections discuss the items that are installed on the identified servers when Server Policy and Packages services are installed.
The Server Manager Engine is a Java program that receives policies through a policy package and applies these policies to the server where this engine is running. The files that are required for the Server Manager engine are stored on the SYS volume in the SManager directory.
The files in the SManager directory are a set of Java libraries and modules that, when run on the server, construct the engine. Additionally, several NLMs are also stored in this directory. These NLMs are helper programs that the Java applications call to perform actions on the server.
To be able to run the Server Manager Engine, each of the servers must be able to run the Java environment and load the several helper NLMs.
In the process of the install, the AUTOEXEC.NCF file may be modified. The line SYS:ENWORKSPDSSMANAGERFS.NCF is added to load the ZFS.NCF file.
The ZFS.NCF file, when executed, starts up the NLMs required for the server to communicate with other servers participating in the ZENworks for Servers system. The file also starts up the Java system with the programs to perform the management functions that control policies being set on servers and software packages being extracted on the subscribers.
Remote Web Console is an HTTP service that enables you as an administrator to connect with a browser and receive HTML screens with information from the various distributors and subscribers in your network. You can have as many remote Web consoles in the network as you want, but you do not need a remote Web console on every server that you are managing. You need only one in each geographical location, and from there you can manage all the servers in the system. The Remote Web Console is started on the server with the sys wc wc.ncf file. If you chose to allow the installer to modify AUTOEXEC.NCF, this command is also added to start the RWC process each time the system restarts.
ConsoleOne snap-ins for administration of policy and distribution services are installed on the server or local workstation based on the installation choices. The various snap-ins for policy services are stored in the snapinszen directory (ZENworks for Desktops 4 also stores some snap-ins in this same directory), whereas the Distribution Services snap-ins are stored in the snapins ed directory of ConsoleOne.
When you request that a database be placed on the server, the install checks whether the proper Sybase engine has been installed on the server and whether the ZENworks for Servers database is present.
The system makes sure that the Sybase database engine is installed on the server. This database engine is stored in the zenworksdbengine directory of the volume you chose during installation. Additionally, the system installs the ZENworks for Servers database called zfslog.db, located in the zenworkspdsdb. Although several different databases are stored for the ZENworks for Servers product, this one is the repository for logging the events and activities of the server management engine that enforces and applies policies and for the TED distributors and subscribers. This database, unlike the site management database file, can coexist on a server that has ZENworks for Desktops 3 inventory database. The site management database uses a different version of the Sybase engine to load it.
During the install, the file SYS:SYSTEMMGMTDBS.NCF is created or modified to launch the Sybase database with the zfslog.db database files. Several databases may be open on the server at the same time to enable the various aspects of ZENworks for Servers to access their separate databases at the same time. There is only one instance of the actual Sybase NLM, but the several different databases are simultaneously accessible.
Tiered Electronic Distribution, also referred to as TED, is the system that enables the network to transfer bundles of files, called distributions, across the network to several server destinations. TED has been designed and implemented to be efficient in the network and to handle the scalability needed for the enterprise networks.
The behavior of the TED system is managed via eDirectory objects in the tree. From there, you can identify the sets of files to move and the destinations where the files should arrive. More details concerning the functionality of TED can be found in Chapter 6, “Setting Up Tiered Electronic Distribution.”
The TED system is made up of several Java components and some NLMs and DLLs that help in providing direct file support. TED is composed of a distributor that sends distributions to entities called subscribers. The subscribers, when completed with the reception of the distributions, verify their contents and then activate software modules called agents, which are responsible for the unpacking and installation of the distributions. The distributor and subscribers need to be active on the server at all times, whereas the agents are launched only when needed and are terminated when their work is complete. In ZENworks for Servers 3, the distributor and subscriber are combined into a single Java component.
The distributor is responsible for sending files to subscribers throughout the network. The distributor is launched on the server by loading the SYS:ENWORKSPDSTEDTED.NCF file. The TED.NCF file determines whether the server is a distributor and then starts up the Java system, if it is not already running, and starts up threads for the distributor process. The distributor then authenticates into eDirectory and collects the configuration information for itself and all the subscribers to which it sends distributions. If you chose to allow the installer to modify AUTOEXEC.NCF, this command is also added to start the distributor process each time the system restarts.
The subscriber is responsible for receiving files from distributors or “parent” subscribers, which are subscribers who are told to forward files on to another subscriber. The subscriber is launched on a NetWare server by loading the SYS:ENWORKSPDSTEDTED.NCF file and is a service on Windows NT/2000, Linux, and Solaris servers that can be configured to launch automatically when the system is started. If you chose to allow the installer to modify AUTOEXEC.NCF, this command is also added to start the subscriber process each time the system restarts.