IBM® Systems Director is a platform management foundation that streamlines the way that physical and virtual systems are managed. Using industry standards, IBM Systems Director supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies. This paper provides guidance and preferred practices about how to install and configure IBM Systems Director Version 6.3. Also, installation guidance, fundamental topics, such as discovery and inventory, and more advanced topics, such as troubleshooting and automation, are covered. This paper is meant to be a partner to the comprehensive documentation in the IBM Systems Director Information Center. This paper is aimed at IT specialists who are planning to install and configure IBM Systems Director on Microsoft Windows, Linux, or IBM AIX®.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication describes the positioning of the IBM Systems Director in the complete management range. It also compares the IBM Systems Director with the IBM Flex Systems Manager (FSM) and describes the environments for which each tool is best suited. This publication helps you plan, install, tailor, and configure the IBM Systems Director on different platforms. It contains information about required system resources and which network ports are used. It shows how to use the Workload Estimator to select the appropriate hardware for IBM Systems Director server and provides information about the IBM Systems Director Editions. Best practices are covered for the basic management tasks that are available in IBM Systems Director, including how to perform discovery; how to collect inventory on discovered resources; how to deploy agent, driver, and firmware updates; how to manage hardware events; and other miscellaneous tasks. An overview of best practices is provided for using IBM Systems Director VMControlTM. Systems Director VMControl is a cross-platform product that assists you in rapidly deploying virtual appliances to create virtual servers that are configured with the operating system and software applications that you want. It also enables you to group resources into system pools, which enable you to centrally manage and control the different workloads in your environment. The following plug-in offerings are described: Energy monitoring and management features offered by IBM Systems Director Active Energy ManagerTM along with the best practice, which needs to be followed in using the IBM Systems Director Active Energy Manager. The IBM AIX® Profile Manager is a tool that can help implement and monitor the security of all AIX servers in a production environment but also implement and monitor the system compliance of those AIX servers. Best practices and the most important questions to ask before creating Workload Partition Manager (WPAR) and WPAR Manager infrastructure. In addition, how you can manage and relocate WPARs using WPAR Manager graphical interface and the command-line interface. Network Control basic functionalities and how to plan for Network Control deployments and also a number of common scenarios with best practices. The IBM Systems Director Service and Support Manager describes how to set up and how to handle serviceable events. Best practices for the Storage Monitoring and Management capabilities offered by IBM Systems Director server. This book is for IBM IT specialists and IT architects, IBM Business Partners, and clients, who are utilizing or considering implementing IBM Systems Director.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication presents a best practices guide for DB2® and InfoSphereTM Warehouse performance on a AIX® 6L with Power SystemsTM virtualization environment. It covers Power hardware features such as PowerVMTM, multi-page support, Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability (RAS) and how to best exploit them with DB2 LUW workloads for both transactional and data warehousing systems. The popularity and reach of DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse has grown in recent years. Enterprises are relying more on these products for their mission-critical transactional and data warehousing workloads. It is critical that these products be supported by an adequately planned infrastructure. This publication offers a reference architecture to build a DB2 solution for transactional and data warehousing workloads using the rich features offered by Power systems. IBM Power Systems have been leading players in the server industry for decades. Power Systems provide great performance while delivering reliability and flexibility to the infrastructure. This book presents a reference architecture to build a DB2 solution for transactional and data warehousing workloads using the rich features offered by Power systems. It aims to demonstrate the benefits DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse can derive from a Power Systems infrastructure and how Power Systems support these products. The book is intended as a guide for a Power Systems specialist to understand the DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse environment and for a DB2 and InfoSphere Warehouse specialist to understand the facilities available for Power Systems supporting these products.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication provides best practices for planning, installing, maintaining, and monitoring the IBM PowerVM® Enterprise Edition virtualization features on IBM POWER7® processor technology-based servers. PowerVM is a combination of hardware, PowerVM Hypervisor, and software, which includes other virtualization features, such as the Virtual I/O Server. This publication is intended for experienced IT specialists and IT architects who want to learn about PowerVM best practices, and focuses on the following topics: Planning and general best practices Installation, migration, and configuration Administration and maintenance Storage and networking Performance monitoring Security PowerVM advanced features This publication is written by a group of seven PowerVM experts from different countries around the world. These experts came together to bring their broad IT skills, depth of knowledge, and experiences from thousands of installations and configurations in different IBM client sites.

This IBM® Redbooks® publication positions the IBM Systems Director Management Console (SDMC) against the IBM Hardware Management Console (HMC). The IBM Systems Director Management Console provides system administrators the ability to manage IBM Power System® servers as well as IBM Power Blade servers. It is based on IBM Systems Director. This publication is designed for system administrators to use as a deskside reference when managing Virtual Servers (formerly partitions) using the SDMC. The major functions that the SDMC provides are server hardware management and virtualization management.

In this IBM® Redbooks® publication we discuss IBM Systems Director Navigator for i, which is a Web console interface for IBM i administration where you can work with the Web-enabled tasks of System i® Navigator. IBM Systems Director Navigator for i includes a number of welcome pages that allow you to quickly find the task that you want to perform. The IBM Systems Director Navigator for i interface is not just a set of URL addressable tasks, but is a robust Web console from which you can manage your IBM i system. However, the System i Navigator Tasks on the Web, which are a set of URL-addressable tasks, can be accessed by using the URL or from within the IBM Systems Director Navigator for i interface. The information in this book is intended to help you start using the Web-based console, IBM Systems Director Navigator for i, by providing you with a look at the new interface as well as tips for working with various parts of the new console.

Booting servers from a storage area network (SAN) is being used increasingly in complex data center environments today, due to its significant benefits over the traditional method of booting from local disks. SAN Boot enables organizations to maximize consolidation of their IT resources, minimize their equipment costs, and realize the considerable management benefits of centralizing the boot process. In SAN Boot, you can deploy diskless servers in an environment where the boot disk is located on (often RAID-capable) storage connected to the SAN. The server (initiator) communicates with the storage device (target) through the SAN using the Fibre Channel host bus adapter (HBA). The system downtime is greatly minimized in case a critical component such as a processor, memory, or host bus adapter fails and needs to be replaced. The system administrator needs to swap only the hardware and reconfigure the HBA's BIOS, switch zoning, and host-port definitions on the storage server. The system image still exists on the logical drive, therefore the server is fully operational after the hardware swap and configuration change is completed. This IBM® Redbooks® publication can help you with the SAN Boot implementation. We present various SAN Boot scenarios using IBM System Storage® products that include DS5000, DS8000®, XIV®, and SVC. The operating systems that are covered include Windows 2008, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Linux, and VMware.