Dell 8.1 manual Server Administrator Services, Managing Your System

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Server Administrator Services

Server Administrator Instrumentation Service monitors the health of a system and provides rapid access to detailed fault and performance information gathered by industry-standard systems management agents. The reporting and viewing features allow retrieval of the overall health status for each chassis that comprises your system. At the subsystem level, you can view information about the voltages, temperatures, fan rpm, and memory function at key points in the system. A detailed account of every relevant cost of ownership (COO) detail about your system can be seen in the summary view. Version information for BIOS, firmware, operating system, and all installed systems management software can also be retrieved.

Additionally, system administrators can use the Instrumentation Service to perform the following essential tasks:

•Specify minimum and maximum values for certain critical components. The values, called thresholds, determine the range in which a warning event for that component occurs (minimum and maximum failure values are specified by the system manufacturer).

•Specify how the system responds when a warning or failure event occurs. Users can configure the actions that a system takes in response to notifications of warning and failure events. Alternatively, users who have around-the-clock monitoring can specify that no action is to be taken and rely on human judgment to select the best action in response to an event.

•Populate all of the user-specifiable values for the system, such as the name of the system, the phone number of the system's primary user, the depreciation method, whether the system is leased or owned, and so on.

NOTE: You must configure the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) service to accept SNMP packets for both managed systems and network management systems running Microsoft Windows Server 2003. For more information about configuring SNMP, see, Configuring the SNMP

Agent for Systems Running Supported Windows Operating Systems.

Managing Your System

The Server Administrator home page defaults to the System object of the system tree view. By default, for the System object opens the Health components under the Properties tab.

By default, the Preferences home page, opens the Node Configuration.

From the Preferences home page, you can restrict access to users with User and Power User privileges, set the SNMP password, and configure user settings and SM SA Connection Service settings.

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