IBM Endpoint Manager for Server Automation

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IBM Endpoint Manager

for Server Automation

Leverage advanced server automation capabilities

with proven Endpoint Manager benefits

Highlights

●● ● ●Manage the lifecycle of all endpoints and

their configurations—including data center servers—from a single console

●● ● ●Create, save and reuse automation flows,

or use out-of-the-box automation that includes thousands of automation scripts

●● ● ●Coordinate OS patching for complex

multi-tier server applications in both physical and virtual environments

●● ● ●Easily customize automation by deploying

common agents and leveraging existing scripts across traditional/physical and virtualized environments and between development, test and production servers

Customers today are grappling with more complexity than ever before. They must manage multiple endpoints, from desktops to laptops to servers, with server environments encompassing both physical and virtual machines. This is made even more challenging by expectations that administrators also respond quickly to changes in the business and the marketplace while reducing costs and increasing efficiency—with fewer resources. Integrated toolsets to help manage everything from mobile devices to servers are in high demand.

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Leverage easy-to-use server automation

Built on BigFix® technology, which provides management for best-of-breed desired state as well as configuration and patch management—coupled with capabilities for creating custom automation plans in both physical and virtual environments— Endpoint Manager for Server Automation provides a set of integrated, easy-to-use capabilities that is unmatched in the industry.

Single user interface

Clients are constantly looking for ways to reduce costs and improve efficiency. One way to address this is to reduce the number of tools and skillsets required to manage their IT assets. While many organizations still rely on separate tools to manage their distributed and data center environments, the basic lifecycle management needs of each environment are quite similar. For example, software distribution, patch manage-ment, operating system deploymanage-ment, and hardware and software inventories are required for both environments. Endpoint Manager for Server Automation builds upon IBM Endpoint Manager for Lifecycle Management to provide a single user interface through which users can manage desktops, laptops and data center servers while lowering operational costs with real-time, policy-based management. Seamless physical and virtual server management from the same, single interface greatly improves visibility and control of all endpoints. Out-of-the-box automation and simple customization Endpoint Manager for Server Automation enables users to easily deploy and manage servers across heterogeneous platforms using either pre-built or custom automation. From the simple user interface, users can create, save and reuse automation flows or take advantage of out-of-the-box automation capabilities. IBM offers an online library that currently contains thousands of discrete units of automation— IBM Fixlet® units—to deliver quick time to value, with new units constantly being added.

Multi-tier client/server architecture

Presentation

Business logic

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It is easy to customize automation through the user interface, which enables use of simple scripting language and the ability to leverage existing scripts—with no programming knowledge necessary. This enables IT to deliver higher-quality services to customers more quickly, while reducing costs.

Task sequencing

Critical for server builds, custom automation to match best practices, and patching operating systems of multi-tiered appli-cations, automated task sequencing is now available through Endpoint Manager for Server Automation. This highly antici-pated feature is designed to extend software lifecycle manage-ment capabilities beyond distributed devices to data center servers, allowing organizations to save valuable time and reduce operational costs.

Task sequencing can be used for critical tasks like server builds (for example, deploying operating systems, configuring settings, deploying simple software, changing the host name and restart-ing computer) or it can be used for other common system administrator tasks that need to be carefully sequenced. Oftentimes users need to carefully sequence a set of operations across a group of systems. This is especially true for middleware applications running in data centers that have dependencies and relationships between systems. An example would be a banking application that has three web servers, two application servers and two databases that all operate together to provide a service. Examples of typical task sequencing would be operating system patching, in which the user would remove “Webserver 1” from a cluster, patch it, restart it and then re-add that server to the cluster. Once this is done, the user can move on to “Webserver 2,” then move to the application servers and database servers.

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Explore the IBM Endpoint Manager

family

Endpoint Manager for Server Automation must be installed with one or more of the following Endpoint Manager software solutions:

●● ●Endpoint Manager for Patch Management—This

easy-to-manage, quick-to-deploy solution supports compre-hensive patch management capabilities among distributed endpoints with more than 95 percent first-pass success rates, reducing business risk, costs, complexity and time, while enhancing security.

●● ●Endpoint Manager for Lifecycle Management—This

solution provides centralized, automated, customizable capa-bilities for asset discovery, hardware and software inventory, automated software distribution and patch management that provides unparalleled visibility and control of their systems. It also provides the ability to automatically remediate issues through continuous management, enabling IT to maintain higher service levels and focus on other critical business issues.

●● ●Endpoint Manager for Security and Compliance—This

solution provides unified, real-time security compliance enforcement to help organizations both protect endpoint assets and assure regulators that systems are meeting critical compliance standards.

You can further consolidate the number of tools, reduce the number of endpoint agents and reduce management costs by extending your investment in Endpoint Manager for Server Automation to include other components in the Endpoint Manager family. Because all functions operate from the same console, management server and endpoint agent, adding more services is a simple matter of a license key change.

Built on Bigfix technology

The power behind all Endpoint Manager functions is a unique, single-infrastructure approach that promotes ease of use by distributing decision-making out to the endpoints, providing extraordinary benefits across the entire solution family. Features include:

●● ●A single, intelligent agent—Endpoint Manager utilizes an

industry-leading approach that places an intelligent agent on each endpoint. This single agent performs multiple functions, including continuous self-assessment and policy enforcement—yet it has minimal impact on system perfor-mance. In contrast to traditional client-server architectures that wait for instructions from a central control point, this agent continuously evaluates relevant instructions and initi-ates actions to remediate in an intelligent manner, sending messages upstream to the central management server and pulling software updates, configuration changes or other information to the endpoint when necessary to comply with a relevant policy. As a result of the agent’s intelligence and speed, the central management server always knows the com-pliance and change status of endpoints, enabling rapid and up-to-date compliance reporting.

●● ●Reporting—The single, unified console built into Endpoint

Manager provides a high level of visibility that includes real-time and continuous reporting and analysis from the intelligent agents on the organization’s endpoints.

●● ●Relay capabilities—The scalable and lightweight

architec-ture of Endpoint Manager allows any agent to be configured as a relay between other agents and the console. This relay function allows the use of existing servers or even worksta-tions to transfer packages across the network, reducing the need for servers.

IBM Endpoint Manager: Unifying operations and security

Managed = Secure Common management agent Unified management console Common infrastructure Single server Security management Systems management

IBM Endpoint Manager

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●● ●Fixlet units and wizards—There are many built-in wizards

that guide end users through the required steps to create their own automation. These auto-generate Fixlet units that include both conditional and action logic to effect changes on each endpoint. The Fixlet Relevance Language is a very sim-ple command language that doesn’t require any programming skills and enables clients, business partners and developers to create custom policies and services for endpoints managed by Endpoint Manager solutions.

Why IBM?

Endpoint Manager for Server Automation is part of the comprehensive IBM portfolio, helping organizations address management of the full range of IT operations across the enterprise. Supporting the instrumented, interconnected and intelligent IT operations of a smarter planet, IBM solutions help ensure real-time visibility, centralized control and enhanced productivity for the entire IT infrastructure, including its globally distributed endpoints.

IBM Endpoint Manager for Server Automation at a glance

Server requirements ●● ● ● ●

●

Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and 2008

Microsoft Windows Server 2003, 2008 and 2008 R2

Console requirements ●●●Microsoft Windows XP, 2000, 2003, Vista, 2008, 2008 R2 and 7

Supported platforms ●●●Microsoft Windows, including XP, 2000, 2003, Vista, 2008, 2008 R2, 7, 8, Server 2012, CE, Mobile, XP Embedded

for the agent

● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ● ●

and Embedded Point-of-Sale Mac OS X

Solaris IBM AIX®

Linux on System z® HP-UX

VMware ESX Server Red Hat Enterprise Linux SUSE Linux Enterprise CentOS Linux Debian Linux Ubuntu Linux

Software requirements One of the following must be installed to use Endpoint Manager for Server Automation:

●

●●IBM Endpoint Manager Patch Management ●

●●IBM Endpoint Manager Security and Compliance ●

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Produced in the United States of America November 2012

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