Agent manager
The agent manager provides authentication and authorization services for installed common agents and resource managers. It also maintains a registry of configuration information about Common Agent managed systems.
Note: Except for security and credential management, systems management
communications between IBM® Flex System
Manager and common agents do
not go through the agent manager.
IBM Flex System Manager uses only one active agent manager at a time to communicate with common agents. If no agent manager is active, IBM Flex System Manager is not able to manage common agents.
- Each common agent can use exactly one agent manager.
- Each agent manager can be used by many resource managers.
- Each agent manager can be used to manage many common agents.
Notes:
- The agent manager that is embedded with IBM Flex System Manager can be used by any number of instances of IBM Flex System Manager, but it is not configured for use with other management application products.
- If you
will use the locally embedded agent manager, you need
to supply credentials when you configure it that are used if you change
agent managers. These credentials depend on your operating system:
- On AIX® or Linux, you can specify any credentials. You do not need to use the root user ID or even an operating system user ID.
- On Windows, use the same administrator credentials that you used to install IBM Flex System Manager.
The agent manager has
the following parts:
- agent manager service
- The agent manager utilizes
http servlets or Web services to manage agents for IBM Flex
System Manager and other
products. The agent manager service provides
authentication and authorization using X.509 digital certificates
and the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protocol. It also processes queries
against its registry of configuration information about common agents and resource managers. Resource managers and common agents must
each register with the agent manager before
they can use its services to communicate with each other.The agent manager service provides the core agent manager functionality with the following services:
- Service catalog
- Provides information about the location of the agent manager service.
- Credential manager
- Enables the agent manager to act as a certificate authority and issue security credentials and revocation lists to managed elements.
- Agent registry
- Retrieves information about the common agent resources.
- Querying service
- Enables the resource manager to query the agent registry for the agent and resource manager information.
- agent manager registry
- The agent manager registry stores
the following information in a database:
- The identity, digital certificates, and communication information for each resource manager
- The identity, digital certificate, and status for each common agent
- Basic configuration information about each common agent including information about the type and version of the hardware and operating system
- The last error or, optionally, a configurable number of errors, reported by each common agent
- Communication parameters for the common agent, including IP address, the port or ports for which the common agent is configured, and the supported protocol