Now that you've been through the basics of IBM Director, you know that there are three different places that IBM Director code executes:
- IBM Director Server
- The IBM Director Server is the heart of the IBM Director product. This is where all of the management
application data, the server engine, and the management application
logic reside. It is a Java application. The IBM Director Server provides the basic functionality such as:
- Discovering things to manage. Inside the SDK these are represented by Managed Objects
- Tracking the status of Managed Objects
- Collecting and saving inventory data
- Defining what actions an operator can do with IBM Director. In
IBM Director, these actions are called tasks
- IBM Director Console
- The IBM Director Console is the graphical user interface (GUI) from
which tasks are performed. The IBM Director administrator
uses this as the primary interface to various IBM Director tasks. The Director Console is a Java Application.
- IBM Director Agent
- The IBM Director Server manages systems and devices in your network by
communicating with the IBM Director Agent or other agents installed on
these managed systems. The agent provides all of the code and
interfaces necessary for the system to be managed by IBM Director.
The Director agent actually only one type of agent that can be managed. Within this three tiered architecture of Server, Console
and Agent, Director can also discover many other types of agents. Here are a few examples:
- SNMP devices
- BladeCetner Management Modules
- CIM agents
- Any other type of agent that you want to manage
When you write code to add new capabilities to IBM Director, you write
extensions and you install different pieces of your extension code on
the Server, the Console, or the Agent. your extension might not have code
in all three places. You decide what parts of IBM Director you need to extend (more on that later under Extension patterns).