Communicating with the IBM Systems Director software

IBM® Systems Director is a platform-management foundation that streamlines the way you manage physical and virtual systems in a heterogeneous environment. By using industry standards, IBM Systems Director supports multiple operating systems and virtualization technologies in IBM and non-IBM x86 platforms.

The IBM Systems Director program is a systems-management product that comes with some BladeCenter® units. The IBM Systems Director software communicates with the BladeCenter unit through the Ethernet port on the active management module. For more information about IBM Systems Director, see the documentation on the IBM Systems Director CD that comes with the server and the IBM xSeries® Systems Management web page at http://www.ibm.com/systems/management/, which presents an overview of IBM Systems Management and IBM Systems Director. This page also lists the minimum version of IBM Director software that you require to manage redundant management modules.

For you to configure the remote alert recipients for IBM Director over LAN, the remote alert recipient must be an IBM Systems Director-enabled server.

To communicate with the BladeCenter unit, the IBM Systems Director software needs a managed object (in the Group Contents page of the IBM Systems Director Management Console main window) that represents the BladeCenter unit. If the BladeCenter management-module IP address is known, the network administrator can create an IBM Systems Director managed object for the unit. If the IP address is not known, the IBM Systems Director software can automatically discover the BladeCenter unit (out-of-band, using the Ethernet port on the BladeCenter management module) and create a managed object for the unit.

For the IBM Systems Director software to discover the BladeCenter unit, your network must initially provide connectivity from the IBM Systems Director server to the BladeCenter management-module Ethernet port. To establish connectivity, the management module attempts to use DHCP to acquire its initial IP address for the Ethernet port. If the DHCP request fails, after 2 minutes the management module uses the static IP address that is assigned to it. Therefore, the DHCP server (if it is used) must be on the management LAN for your BladeCenter unit.

Notes:

All management modules are preconfigured with the same static IP address. You can use the management-module web interface to assign a new static IP address for each BladeCenter unit. If DHCP is not used and you do not assign a new static IP address for each BladeCenter unit before you attempt to communicate with the IBM Systems Director software, only one BladeCenter unit at a time can be added onto the network for discovery. Adding multiple units to the network without a unique IP address assignment for each BladeCenter unit results in IP address conflicts.
For I/O-module communication with a remote management station, such as a management server that is running IBM Systems Director Server, through the management-module external Ethernet port, the I/O-module internal network interface and the management-module internal and external interfaces must be on the same subnet.