Tivoli Management Framework provides a set of services that enable you to monitor
your environment and install add-on products on both Unix and Windows systems (mainframes
are covered too). Here are several IBM-style definitions:
Tivoli resources are systems,
devices, services, and facilities in a distributed system. Each Tivoli resource
is classified as a resource type. Examples of Tivoli resources are workstations,
software, and administrators. After a Tivoli software product is installed,
the underlying infrastructure provides you with a logical view of all resources
managed by the product. Tivoli software products enable you to make local and
global system changes to these resources. With Tivoli software products, you
can automatically update the actual system resources when the corresponding
Tivoli resources are created, modified, or deleted.
A policy is a rule that is enforced for
management operations that are performed by administrators. Traditionally, these
rules take the form of software, shell scripts, written procedures, and guidelines,
some of which are known only to the system administrators. Refer to
Policy and policy regions for more information.
A policy region is a collection of Tivoli
resources that are governed by a common set of policies. A policy region is
often created to represent a management domain or area of influence for one
or more system administrators. Refer to
Policy and policy regions for more information.
A profile is a common configuration information for a collection
of resources. In other words a profile is a collection of
application-specific information that can be manipulated and distributed a
group of machines with Tivoli endpoints installed. Profile is
controlled by profile manager which distributes all the changes to members
of the profile (profile endpoints). Again it is important to understand that
all Tivoli operations are performed in the context of profiles.
A task is an executable that perform a certain function.
A job is a task with a predefined set of nodes. It can be
executed by clicking on the icon on the TME Desktop.
TEC (Tivoli Enterprise Console)
is formally a Tivoli application that process events, but in reality it is a
part of Tivoli Framework. Events can represent feedback on the results
of execution of Tivoli tasks or can be result of processing logs of getting
some system information.
Tivoli was far ahead of its time when it was released and it provide a rather
flexible way to structure installation into a hierarchy of TMA so that each of
them is more specialized and more flexible then if everything is done in a
single management server. Unfortunately few organizations use this Tivoli
capability. For a large organization the Tivoli installation should be generally
divided into a set of regions (often called policy regions), based on
geography (for example North America, Canada and Latin America, platform
(windows, Unix, etc), application used (for example SAP/R3 region, DMZ region)
or importance (critical server region, important server region and regular
server region).
Servers on which TMRs are installed can real or virtual, but independently of
the type of the server used and server platform each TMR server has its own
database (and that means that unless you use DB2 you need to take into account
the cost of licensing) and running its own oserv
daemon. These TMA then can be connected to each other, either
hierarchically (one way connection when upstream TMR knows about resources of
lower TMRs but not vice-versa) or horizontally (when each TMR has full
symmetrical access toward resources of each other). As we mentioned
before, resources can be servers, devices or services that need management.
The following is a list of Tivoli Management Framework components that enable
you to perform management tasks. The key features include:
Tivoli administrators enable you to assign
different authorization roles to different administrators and to securely delegate
various system management tasks to these same administrators. It's more granular
then Unix root and reminds RBAC, although Tivoli enterprise environments often
resemble Unix: there are few people are generally responsible for Tivoli system
and they have full access. On the other hand there are operators who are unprivileged
users similar to regular Unix users. Tivoli administrators are described
in more detail in
Administrators.
Task libraries is a very important and useful feature,
that serve as a collection point for common system management tasks and activities.
Task libraries are described in
Task libraries.
Hierarchical profiles and
profile managers, which enable you to distribute
configuration data that is common to several servers with endpoints (or more
general resources). Profiles and profile managers are described in
Profiles and profile managers.
A scheduler facility, which enables you
to control the timing and automation of regular system operations. The scheduler
is described in
Scheduler.
A region connection facility, which includes
support for multiple Tivoli regions that can be connected across different networks.
A region (TMR) consists of a Tivoli server and its clients (managed nodes,
gateways, and endpoints). Regions are described in more detail in
Regions.
Other features include:
Multiplexed distribution services,
which enable you to efficiently distribute large amounts of data, such as
configuration data in Tivoli profile-based products, across complex networks.
The distribution services are described in
Multiplexed distribution services.
The RDBMS Interface Module (RIM),
which enables some Tivoli software products to write product-specific information
to supported relational databases. RIM is described in
RDBMS Interface Module.
A query facility, which searches
and retrieves information from a RIM database. The query facility is described
in
Query facility.
A notification facility, which provides
an audit trail of system management tasks. The notification facility is
described in
Notification.
TMF was created before SSH was available and it provides the facilities to transfer files and execute commands on remote
systems. The level of security can be set from none to high. It is
dangerous to have low security as Tivoli endpoints can perform operations as
root.
Most Tivoli systems management tasks, regardless of the application or component
that is to be managed, may be performed by using the Tivoli desktop,
which provides a user interface consistent throughout management applications.
The TMR server provides facilities required to manage the environment.
One of its major distinguishing points is that it contains and controls the major
portion of a distributed database that contains information regarding the managed
resources and objects used to manage the environment. Depending on the size and
requirements of an environment, there may be more than one TMR defined.
The Tivoli Framework includes both GUI and command line interfaces:
Tivoli Desktop - This is a Tivoli Graphical User Interface (GUI)
that allows administrators to view and control the Tivoli Enterprise environment
graphically. Though the desktop is provided by the framework, as Tivoli applications
are installed, they may add new functions and options to the desktop. Nevertheless,
the desktop provides a standard logical layout of the Tivoli environment and
keeps this standard throughout the addition of other Tivoli products. In UNIX
environments, the Tivoli desktop is installed with the Tivoli Management Framework.
However, in PC-based environments, the installation of the desktop is optional
and requires a separate installation process.
Command Line Interface (CLI) - Virtually all functions that can be
performed through the graphical user interface may also be performed through
a command line and vice versa. Experienced administrators may find the command
line interface convenient for performing certain actions without the requirement
to navigate through the GUI. The command line interface also makes it easy to
develop scripts to execute a series of management functions in one step. Tivoli
Web Interface - The Tivoli Management Framework provides capabilities to manage
functions through a Web browser. Some Tivoli applications use this service to
present a Web-based interface for administrators and end-users. The Tivoli Management
Framework itself uses this service to allow administrators to manage TMA endpoints.
oserv daemon - This service runs continuously and coordinates communication
between systems within the Tivoli environment. The
oserv daemon is an
implementation of a CORBA compliant Object Request Broker (ORB) and hides the
communications infrastructure from both administrators and application developers.
All Managed Nodes run the oserv daemon. Lately framework endpoints (Managed Nodes)
were infested with Java (for example in case of Tivoli Advanced Monitoring 5.1 is
deployed) with the connected to this Java VM hell problem that negatively affected
the stability (Tivoli Advanced Monitoring 5.1 became stable shortly before is can
be replaced with C++ based version 6.1 :-).
Framework 4.1.1 has the “j” parameter for winstlcf which
defines installation vis ssh. ... You need to modify the ssh client
configuration file in /etc/ssh/ssh_config and ensure that
StrictHostKeyChecking is set to no (the default is yes ).
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