Dell OpenManage™ IT Assistant User's Guide
 |
NOTE: See the IT Assistant white papers at www.dell.com/openmanage for further information on using IT Assistant to your best advantage. |
IT Assistant was created before Server Administrator and was implemented with an internal cache to decrease response time when configuring a system. IT Assistant updates this cache only when it makes a change, so IT Assistant is unaware that Server Administrator changed the data value. The only way to get IT Assistant to reflect the change is to click on a second system and then return to the one in question. This action may not solve all problems because IT Assistant stores considerable data that will only be updated during a discovery cycle.
These frequently asked questions cover the general capabilities of IT Assistant, optimization of the user interface environment, and discovery configuration.
The uninstall process depends on a log maintained by InstallShield and some additional processing to remove temporary files. If those directories being removed contain additional files, or if there is a sharing violation among files with some other active process, then the uninstall process does not delete those files and directories.
You can do the following:
The IT Assistant installation program installs the IT Assistant services (IT Assistant connection service and IT Assistant network monitoring service) with the CIM discovery feature disabled. You must run the configservices.exe utility to enable discovery and management of CIM-instrumented systems.
NOTE: You must run the configservices.exe utility on the management station.
IT Assistant discovers any Internet Protocol (IP) or Internetwork Packet eXchange (IPX) device on the target discovery range. If IT Assistant can determine the system type by reading the Desktop Management Interface (DMI) information, it can report this information through the IT Assistant browser-based user interface. All systems that do not have industry-standard DMI agents can be discovered on the discovery range but are listed as unclassified. From non-Dell systems with industry-compliant instrumentation, IT Assistant can receive standard DMI alerts and generic SNMP traps, but cannot configure the systems or perform vendor-specific operations.
No. Although IT Assistant is tested for installation on Dell systems, the IT Assistant browser-based user interface is designed to operate on a system running the supported operating systems. Therefore, IT Assistant should work without incident on non-Dell systems that run these operating systems and that meet the minimum hardware specifications described in "Before You Begin." However, Dell does not provide warranty or free support for non-Dell systems.
Multiple users can run IT Assistant to connect to IT Assistant services. The number of users is limited by the resources available on the management station.
Dell OpenManage IT Assistant supports Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or later.
Dell recommends that you uninstall Dell OpenManage Client Administrator or performance may be affected.
Dell OpenManage IT Assistant is designed and tested to manage up to 1500 systems.
IT Assistant is a local area network (LAN)-oriented tool for monitoring and managing systems in an IP/IPX network. You can monitor and manage systems over the Internet using IT Assistant, but Dell does not recommend it unless you have a way of securing your data, which you must provide. IT Assistant does provide security suitable for use over a corporate intranet.
Yes, IT Assistant reports WBEM/Common Information Model (CIM) information from any provider, including non-Dell systems.
When IT Assistant detects that a memory slot contains memory that has an ECC error count greater than zero, an edit (
) icon appears next to that memory slot on the Status tab of the systems window. Click the edit icon to open a dialog box that enables you to reset the ECC count.
While IT Assistant and the DRAC II Web Console can be Web-served and viewed using Internet Explorer, Array Manager cannot.
To operate the IT Assistant browser-based user interface, you need a computer that runs a supported operating system. The computer must be configured with a mouse, and the monitor should have a minimum resolution of 800 x 600.
- Apply the latest service pack for the Microsoft® Windows® operating system that you are using on the system from which you are running the interface.
- Apply the latest service pack for the version of Microsoft Internet Explorer you are using. (Download the latest service pack from www.microsoft.com.)
Pressing <F5> or clicking Refresh reloads the active HTML page and causes the IT Assistant browser-based user interface to attempt to reconnect with the IT Assistant services. This is the default browser behavior.
By default, IT Assistant does not recognize Windows user names and passwords for either the read-write access login (occurs at startup) or the system management login (occurs when you initiate a management action on a system for the first time during a session). You must configure IT Assistant user names and passwords within IT Assistant itself. See "IT Assistant Services Security" and "User Setup for Systems and Dell Remote Access Hardware."
IT Assistant displays the Login dialog box whenever you initiate a management action on a system for the first time during a session, regardless of whether the system is a server or a desktop. If the system is a desktop, this is the user name and password set up in the system BIOS. If no user name and password are configured or enabled in BIOS, then the User Name field displays BIOS Password; entering a blank password enables you to edit the system properties.
The interface permits you to use a single uniform login to the user interface session. You can use the same login information for multiple systems by clicking the checkbox in the Login dialog box. If the login information is incorrect for a particular system, you are prompted with a Login dialog box again.
A Dell desktop, workstation, or portable system has a single user name and password combination. The user name defaults to Administrator on the Users tab for that particular system. Dell servers support multiple users.
NOTE: Users configured on the Users tab are different from users configured through the operating system.
The IT Assistant browser-based user interface displays the alerts in sets of 500. Click the More button to see additional sets of alerts. The message at the top of the window displays the number of alerts that are currently displayed to you. The Continuous Update check box determines if the list is continually updated as new alerts are generated. If this option is turned off, new alerts are not visible, but the message displays a count of the number of new alerts since the last refresh was performed. Click Refresh View on the blue IT Assistant action bar to synchronize the alert display with the events stored in the IT Assistant data repository. Dell recommends that you periodically delete old alerts from the IT Assistant data repository to optimize database performance.
There is a known issue with string formatting for times after 2037, which is due to a limitation of the underlying libraries.
For security reasons, certain components are not editable on the Details tab.
The power state is dependent on the most recent status poll, which is dependent on the status polling interval. The power state will be updated when the next status poll occurs.
To see new events in this mode, click Refresh View on the IT Assistant Action Bar, or click a column header in the Alerts window.
Internet Explorer 5.0 and 5.01 generate an application error on exit. Microsoft has acknowledged this to be a defect.
The interface is not properly installed on your system. The installation failure occurred
for one of the following reasons:
- You refused to accept the security certificate from Dell.
- Your Internet Explorer security setting is too high. Restart the IT Assistant interface
to get the certificate again. If the certificate does not appear and you still get the
error, then set Internet Explorer security to the default setting of Medium.
This typically occurs when IT Assistant receives an event from the system you are viewing. When this happens, the screen flashes and the status tree is rebuilt to reflect any change in status of any status tree entries. This flashing can be minimized by clearing the Alerts cause refresh check box in the user interface.
If you observe this behavior and want to prevent it, perform the following steps:
Start Internet Explorer.
On the menu bar, click Tools, then click Internet
Options.
In the Internet Options dialog box, click the Advanced
tab.
In the Settings list box, locate the Reuse
windows for launching shortcuts option and clear (deselect) the check box
beside it.
Click OK and then close Internet Explorer. If other Internet Explorer windows are running, close them as well.
When you subsequently use Web page or .htm file shortcuts, the content of the Web page or file appears in a separate Internet Explorer window and will not replace the IT Assistant interface.
Clearing the Alerts Cause Refresh check box disables the alert refresh behavior as long as the global status of the system does not change. If an alert causes a change in the global status of a system, the IT Assistant services still refresh the interface with the new status information.
IT Assistant uses a caching scheme to detect duplicate events and then delete the duplicates. This implementation prevents an event "storm" from adversely affecting the performance of IT Assistant. To change the characteristics of the event caching scheme, click Event Logging, located under Configuration, on the IT Assistant navigation tree. For additional information, see the Event Management White Paper.
Name resolution may fail if it is not properly configured on your system using Domain Name System (DNS) or Windows Internetworking Name Server (WINS). You can specify System x by IP address, or check your network name resolution configuration.
Another reason may be that the port number used for communication with the IT Assistant Connection Service was changed.
If you upgrade an older version of IT Assistant to version 6.0 or later, you may notice that some system names have changed. In IT Assistant 6.4 or later you can now configure name resolution from the Discovery Cycle Configuration dialog box. Configure name resolution before you discover subnets.
IT Assistant 6.x attempts to retrieve a system's name from the DNS first, then from instrumentation if the DNS attempt fails. Previous versions of IT Assistant attempted to retrieve the system name from instrumentation first; if instrumentation was not loaded on the system, IT Assistant then attempted to retrieve the name from DNS.
NOTE: If a system's instrumentation name is different from its name as resolved by DNS and DNS goes down during a discovery cycle, the system can appear in the system tree with a different name, resulting in two entries for the same system (if DNS is the preferred name resolution).
NOTE: If you rename a system but keep its IP address the same, the system could have duplicate entries in the system tree. Because Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) is common in network environments, IT Assistant does not attempt to resolve such duplications. You must manually delete any duplicate system tree entries.
In order for CIM indications to be sent to the management station, the management station must register with the managed system. The registration is broken every time the management station or the managed system is restarted. When IT Assistant discovers a system, it registers that system with the CIM indication provider. If the managed system is restarted, IT Assistant does not reregister it until the next discovery cycle. To force a reregistration with the indication provider, force discovery of the managed system in IT Assistant using the Force Discovery menu command.
Changing your discovery configuration and adding or removing discovered systems may not seem to take effect immediately. These actions are processed by the IT Assistant network monitoring service, and IT Assistant browser-based user interface responses may be delayed if the service is busy performing its discovery and status-monitoring activities. The actions take effect when the IT Assistant services are free to handle the requests.
Dell recommends that you use the default values provided in the Discovery Cycle Configuration dialog box. Dell selected these defaults to avoid excessive network traffic and to lessen the impact that discovery has on system performance. Dell recommends that you not significantly shorten the discovery and status poll times.
Dates and times are reported according to the time zone configured on the management station.
ping IP address
(Replace <IP address> with the actual IP address, and do not type the brackets.)
When you ping a system on the network, a confirmation message appears when the connection is made; otherwise, a time-out message appears, indicating a problem with the network installation on the remote system. If the ping command is successful and the client is not discovered or is shown as inactive, the problem is related to the network settings.
Usually, this condition indicates that either the IT Assistant network monitoring service has stopped running or is not responding. Start or restart the IT Assistant network monitoring service.
Some UNIX® systems run DMI providers that are not DMI 2.0-compliant. These noncompliant DMI providers can cause the Network monitoring service to stop while trying to communicate with those systems using DMI. If UNIX systems are present on a discovery range that IT Assistant is attempting to discover, perform either step a or b.
a) Do not discover those systems (use an IP address range in the Discovery Range dialog box that excludes the UNIX system[s])
or
b) Use the configservices utility to disable DMI discovery.c) Disable the DMI service on the UNIX system(s) or patch the DMI provider to make it DMI 2.0-compliant.
NOTE: Both the Client Instrumentation and the Hardware Instrumentation Package (HIP) 3.x or earlier use the DMI systems management protocol as their primary means of communication. It is not recommended that you disable DMI discovery if either of the following conditions is true of your IT environment:
- You are using IT Assistant to manage Dell desktop systems.
- You are using IT Assistant to manage servers running the Dell OpenManage Hardware Instrumentation Package (HIP) 3.x or earlier.
If a) or b) resolves the problem, it is likely that the UNIX systems present on the discovery range are running a DMI provider service. To retain DMI discovery capabilities, you must install or upgrade to a DMI 2.0 DMI provider.
IT Assistant reports attribute values in the table located under the Details tab. If IT Assistant does not detect an attribute value for the selected group of the local or remote system, or if the attribute value exists but is not detected, IT Assistant displays Unknown or –1.
Port 2607 enables the IT Assistant UI to communicate with the IT Assistant Connection Service. Port 2606 enables the IT Assistant Connection Service to communicate with the IT Assistant Network Monitoring Service. You can change these port assignments when installing IT Assistant using customized settings. If you do not change the port assignments during customized installation, you must use the registry to reassign port numbers. See also "Port Usage."
This is most likely to occur when using pure SNMP to communicate with the managed system. Most of the summary information shown is taken out of tables across the appropriate MIB file. In this case, network information is taken from the MIB2|Interfaces table. Binding multiple protocols to a single network card adds a row to the MIB file interfaces table for each protocol. IT Assistant then pulls all rows from this table. Because there is only one physical address per network card, you can use the physical media access control (MAC) address to ascertain how many network cards are actually installed.
Make sure that the managed system's SNMP services are set to read-write permission. If your SNMP services default to read-only permission, you will not be able to log in. Extending read-write permissions to your SNMP services allows the login to proceed.
The background for this step is that this version of IT Assistant uses the SNMP protocol as a preferred means of communicating with the Server Administrator and Server Agent 4.2 and above, even if DMI is available. This change in protocols means that login authentication is done only through SNMP.
Some previous versions of IT Assistant first attempt to retrieve the system name from instrumentation; if instrumentation is not loaded on a system, they then attempt to retrieve the name from the domain name server (DNS). Retrieving system names in this manner can lead to naming inconsistencies between instrumented and noninstrumented systems. This version of IT Assistant solves naming inconsistencies by always attempting to retrieve a system's name from DNS first, then from instrumentation if DNS fails. If you have existing custom groups, their membership can be affected.
This is a known issue with the Microsoft WBEM implementation. DCOM logs an error every time a remote connection fails. If CIM is enabled, IT Assistant tries to connect to every CIM agent that resides at an address that can be contacted using the ping command. If the username and password do not work or if there is no CIM agent, DCOM adds an error message to the event log.
This error is caused by running IT Assistant in a Web-served configuration and Array Manager is not installed on the management station or the system running the browser-based interface. To correct the error, either install the latest Array Manager software on the management station or on the system running the interface. If you install Array Manager on the management station, IT Assistant stops generating the error. However, if you install Array Manager on the system running the interface, you may see this error when running the browser based-interface on another machine.
For more information on how to use IT Assistant's discript program, see "Utilities and Command-Line Operation." The scripts in this section are examples of IT Assistant's discript program capabilities.
Yes. You can write a command-line script to get the feedback on the Flash BIOS information after updating the Flash BIOS, as follows:
Connect IPAddress;
Get LastBiosUpdate;
Print "Last Bios Update : ",result,LF;
EndConnect;
The connect statement accepts more than one IP address. For more information on command-line scripts, see "Utilities and Command-Line Operation."
If you use IT Assistant for this operation, you must enter the password once for each system. If the administrator's password is the same for all of the client computers, you can write a script to perform shutdown, as follows:
Connect IPAddress;
Set Password,"xyz";
ShutDown;
EndConnect;
NOTE: You can modify the script to restart the remote client. See "Utilities and Command-Line Operation." See "Utilities and Command-Line Operation" for more information.
Yes, you can use a command-line script and schedule the task to run this script at a specified time. For example, write the following script:
Connect IPAddress;
Set Password,"xyz";
Restart;
EndConnect;
Save this file as restart.sc and use Windows Plus, Norton Scheduler, or another utility to schedule the program discript.exe, which is located in the \dmi\bin directory, to run at the desired time. Use the command-line option and enter the filename restart.sc. See "Utilities and Command-Line Operation" for more information.