SEM Overview

There are three basic components installed with Sysgem Enterprise Manager (SEM):

1. Management Console: This is installed on Windows workstations and provides the user interface (GUI) to the SEM user.

2. Agents: SEM agents are installed on the target servers that are to be managed. They run as non-interactive processes on the different platform types, they communicate with the Management Consoles and run scripts on demand, passing results to the Management Console for display to the SEM user.

3. Authorization Server: The SEM Authorization Server is at the centre of the SEM architecture. To use SEM, a user has to start the SEM Management Console on their workstation and log into the SEM Authorization Server using a SEM username and password. Each SEM user account has a profile that defines a set of permissions granted to the user. On successfully logging into SEM the appropriate set of SEM display windows and scripts that the user has permission to use are downloaded from the Authorisation Server into the Management Console, and from there will interact with the user and the agents that the user is permitted to connect to. When SEM scripts are created or modified a single, central, copy is retained at the SEM Authorization Server.

Communications

Communications between the three components use a secure encrypted protocol over TCP/IP in SEM versions prior to v3.0. In version 3.0 onwards, the communications between SEM components use Secure Socket Layer (SSL) protocols.

Supported Platforms

SEM Agents run on servers of the following platform types:

• Linux/Agents (most variants)

• MS Windows

• OpenVMS (VAX/ALPHA/IA64)

• OS/400