Sun Microsystems V490 manual About Exercising the System, Who Should Use Sun Management Center?

Who Should Use Sun Management Center?

Sun Management Center software is geared primarily toward system administrators who have large data centers to monitor or other installations that have many computer platforms to monitor. If you administer a more modest installation, you need to weigh Sun Management Center software’s benefits against the requirement of maintaining a significant database (typically over 700 Mbytes) of system status information.

The servers being monitored must be up and running if you want to use Sun Management Center, since this tool relies on the Solaris OS. For instructions, see “How to Monitor the System Using Sun Management Center Software” on page 186. For detailed information about the product, see the Sun Management Center User’s Guide.

Obtaining the Latest Information

For the latest information about this product, go to the Sun Management Center Web site at: http://www.sun.com/sunmanagementcenter.

About Exercising the System

It is relatively easy to detect when a system component fails outright. However, when a system has an intermittent problem or seems to be “behaving strangely,” a software tool that stresses or exercises the computer’s many subsystems can help disclose the source of the emerging problem and prevent long periods of reduced functionality or system downtime.

Sun provides two tools for exercising Sun Fire V490 systems:

■Sun Validation Test Suite (SunVTS™)

■Hardware Diagnostic Suite

TABLE 6-9shows the FRUs that each system exercising tool is capable of isolating. Note that individual tools do not necessarily test all the components or paths of a particular FRU.

Chapter 6 Diagnostic Tools 105