Chapter 14. Open systems support and software 283
Figure 14-1 IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center
TPC is the integration point for storage and fabric management, and replication, as depicted
in Figure 14-1. It provides a
launchpad for the following IBM TotalStorage Open Software
Family and Tivoli products:
IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager
IBM Tivoli SAN Manager
IBM Tivoli Storage Manager
IBM TotalStorage Multiple Device Manager
These products allow for the management of data through its lifecycle, device configuration,
performance, replication, storage network fabric, data backup, data availability, and data
recovery, as well as enterprise policies for managing host, application, database, and
filesystem data.
As a component of the IBM TotalStorage Productivity Center, Multiple Device Manager is
designed to reduce the complexity of managing SAN storage devices by allowing
administrators to configure, manage, and monitor storage from a single console.
The devices managed are not restricted to IBM brand products. In fact, any device compliant
with the Storage Network Industry Association (SNIA) Storage Management Initiative
Specification (SMI-S) can be managed with the IBM TotalStorage Multiple Device Manager.
The protocol utilized to enable the central management is called the
Common Information
Model
(CIM). This open standards based protocol uses XML to define CIM objects and to
manage storage devices over HTTP transactions. Figure 14-2 on page 284 shows the MDM
main panel.