As IBM Director 6 has been released few months back & with all the publicity IBM has made about its enhancement. I thought I will try it out. Although I had a quite good experience with IBM Director 5.2, I found it a bit tough to start with IBM Director 6 without returning to the manual. It seems IBM has totally rebuilt the product from scratch with a totally new interface & new terminology.

After catching the important terminology changes from IBM Director 5.2 to IBM Systems Director 6 life has become way easier with the new Systems Director. For that reason I have decided to share these new Terminology with all of you IBM Director 5.2 admins & gurus to have a nicer start with IBM Director 6 than what I had.

IBM Systems Director Terminology changes:

Several terms have changed in IBM Systems Director 6.1 and should be noted in order to avoid confusion when working with the new version.

A Level-0 managed object is now referred to as an agentless-managed system. This is a system that does not have an agent installed, but can be discovered by IBM Systems Director using SSH, DCOM, or SNMP.

IBM Director Core Services is now referred to as Platform Agent. Platform Agent provides a lighter footprint and fewer management functions than the Common Agent. A system on which Platform Agent is installed is now known as a Platform-Agent managed system rather than a Level-1 managed object.

IBM Director Agent is now referred to as Common Agent. Common Agent provides a rich set of security, deployment, and management function. A system on which Common Agent is installed is now known as a Common Agent managed system rather than a Level-2 managed object.

Managed objects are now called systems, which are hardware endpoints that can be discovered and managed by IBM Systems Director. For example, storage devices, network devices, physical servers, virtual servers, and virtual farms are systems.

Extensions are now known as plug-ins, which are free or for-fee software that is downloaded and installed on top of IBM Systems Director to provide additional function.

:
Job activation is now referred to as job instance, which is a specific occurrence of a job that is running or has completed running.

:
Event action plans are now called Event Automation Plans. These are
user-defined policies that determine how IBM Systems Director automatically handles certain events. An event action plan comprises one or more event filters and one or more customized event actions.

Hardware control points are now known as platform managers. A platform manager is software that manages one or more host systems and their associated virtual servers and operating systems. Platform managers can be started from the IBM Systems Director Web interface. For example, BladeCenter Management Module, IBM Hardware Management Console (HMC), IBM Integrated Virtualization Manager (IVM), and VMware VirtualCenter are platform managers.

What was previously called a configuration profile is now called a configuration plan, which is a collection of templates used to configure hardware and operating systems.

:
Components are now referred to as templates. These are stored versions of definition parameters for the configuration of specific systems.

Remote session is now called the remote command line and still refers to initiating a command-line interface to a remote managed system.

IBM Systems Director 6 Withdrawn operating system support:

The operating systems listed here are ones that were supported by IBM Director 5.2 but are no longer supported by the Common Agent or Platform Agent in IBM Systems Director 6.1. These operating systems can be managed by IBM Systems Director using the appropriate IBM Director 5.2 Agent. The operating systems that are effected are:

A- Thirty-two-bit System x and non-IBM x86 hardware platforms:
– Windows 2000, all editions and versions
– Windows Small Business Server 2003, all versions
– RHEL Advanced Server and Enterprise Server V3.0
– RHEL Workstation V3.0
– VMware ESX Server Versions 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.5.3, 2.5.4, 2.5.5, 3.0.2U1, 3.0.3
– VMware GSX Server, v3.1 3.2

B-  Sixty-four-bit System x and non-IBM x86 hardware platforms:
– Windows Server® 2003 Datacenter Edition for Itanium® systems
– Windows Server 2003 Enterprise Edition for Itanium systems
– RHEL Advanced Server V3.0 for Intel Itanium®
– RHEL Workstation V3.0 for AMD64 and EM64T
– RHEL Advanced Server V4., for Intel Itanium
– SLES 9 for Itanium Processor Family
– Microsoft Virtual Server 2005

C- IBM Power Systems hardware platforms:
– AIX 5L™ V5.2 TL06 SP4
– i5/OS, V5R3, V5R4, V6R1
– RHEL Advanced Server V4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 5.0

D- IBM System z hardware platform: RHEL for Mainframe Computing V5.1, 5.0
Note: Even though there is no current version of the Common Agent or
Platform Agent for the operating systems listed above, they can be managed by IBM Systems Director using the previous Version 5.20 Director Agent or Core Services.

For a complete list of supported operating systems (including those supported using IBM Director 5.2 agent software or equivalent software such as the i5/OS 5722-UME component) see the Information Center:
http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/systems/index.jsp?topic=/director.plan_6.1/fqm0_r_os_supported_by_ibm_director_61.html

IBM Systems Director 6 Discontinued functions:

Several Director 5 management functions have been discontinued in IBM Systems Director 6.1 either because the function is no longer needed or because it has been replaced with an equivalent capability.

IBM Director base functions

The following base functions that were available in IBM Director 5.20 are not
supported in IBM Systems Director 6.1:

License Administrator
License Administrator is no longer supported in IBM Systems Director. In the previous release you used License Administration to view the total number of product licenses, the number of used licenses, and the number of available licenses.

:
Rack Manager
Rack Manager is no longer supported in IBM Systems Director. In the
previous release, you used Rack Manager to group your systems in visual
representations of rack suites.

:
Remote Control
Remote Control function has been replaced with third-party tools, including
Virtual Network Computing (VNC) and RDP.

:
Associations
Associations changed the organization of a group of managed objects. This is
no longer supported.

High availability
High availability configurations are not currently supported by IBM Systems
Director.

Microsoft Cluster Management
You can no longer monitor the status of clusters in your network using the
Microsoft Cluster Browser.

Inventory monitors
You can no longer create a monitor that will generate an event based on a
change in inventory.

:
Discontinued event actions
The following event actions are no longer available:
– Add a message to the console ticker tape.
– Send an event message to a console user.
– Update the status of the event system.

IBM Director 5.20 discontinued extensions in IBM Systems Director 6

The following extensions that were available in IBM Director 5.20 are not
supported in IBM Systems Director 6.1:

Capacity Manager
Capacity Manager is no longer a supported plug-in for IBM Systems Director.
Capacity Manager was a resource-management planning tool that you could
use to monitor critical resources, identify current or potential bottlenecks,
generate performance-analysis reports, recommend ways to improve performance and prevent diminished performance or downtime, and forecast performance trends.

Electronic Service Agent™
The Electronic Service Agent extension has been replaced by the Service
and Support Manager plug-in for IBM Systems Director. This plug-in includes
the Electronic Service Agent tool, which identifies and reports hardware
problems and service information automatically to IBM for service and
support.

Remote Deployment Manager
Remote Deployment Manager (RDM) is no longer a supported plug-in for IBM Systems Director. RDM is replaced by Tivoli Provisioning Manager for OS Deployment (TPM for OSD). At the time of writing, you can launch TPM for OSD as an external application from the IBM Systems Director Web interface.

Server Storage Provisioning Tool
Server Storage Provisioning Tool function and commands have been
integrated into IBM Systems Director in the Storage Manager plug-in. The
commands are now called storage commands.

ServeRAID Manager
ServeRAID Manager is no longer a supported plug-in for IBM Systems
Director. Systems Director does perform inventory collection, monitor status, and raise events for RAID controllers.

Software Distribution Premium Edition
Software Distribution Premium Edition is no longer a supported plug-in for
IBM Systems Director. Software Distribution Premium Edition was used to
import applications and data, build a software package, and distribute the
package to managed systems. The Update Manager plug-in for IBM Systems
Director 6.1 can perform BIOS, firmware, and driver updates for managed
systems, as well as push Common Agent and Platform Agent to any
discovered operating system for which the agent is supported.

System Availability
System Availability is no longer a supported extension of IBM Systems
Director. System Availability was an analysis tool that you used to view
statistics about system uptime and downtime, identify problematic systems
that have had too many unplanned outages over a specified period of time,
identify system that have old availability data, and identify systems that fail to report data.

z/VM® Center
z/VM Center is no longer a supported extension of IBM Systems Director.
z/VM Center used the z/VM hypervisor to provision System z resources in the form of z/VM virtual servers.

The dircmd command-line interface
All dircmd commands and several dircli commands that were supported in
IBM Director Version 5.20 and earlier are no longer supported. In most cases, equivalent functionality is implemented through commands in the smcli command-line interface.

Please note most of the information above was extracted from “Implementing IBM Systems Director 6.1 RedBook” which have all you need to know about IBM Systems Director 6.1. I really recommend going through this book if you are going to implement or manage IBM Systems Director 6.1.

I hope this was helpful information. Please leave your questions & Comment in the comment field below.