Assigning windows machines to different agent/profiler and space issues

Question

Hi

We have storage manager installed. Now we are looking to install agent on 200 phyiscal machines for monitoring. We do not want to put all load on main Storage Manager but want to installed a agent on another windows machines and make it as collector so all other 200 machines can report to the new agent/collector and then collector can talk to Storage Manager.

I want to know how to assign windows machines to other agent we will installed on a seperate server. I tried looking under Settings> Manage Agent Assignments and was able to see machine I have install agent that I want to act like Collector

but I can see only tabs for ESX,or Cluster and cannot see how to assign windows machiens to a different agent.. Any Help??

Second as per documentation agent requires around 1GB space but we do not have that much space on C: Drive. If I change installation directory to D.. Would all informaiton agent needs to store will be stored on D:  or does agent need to store information at some other place in C: like Application Data??

Any help would be really good

Regards

Sam

bmrad · Answer

Sam,

There is only one collector on the Storage Manager server that inserts data into the database.  You should definitely put a lot of resources to server, I would suggest 4 processors, 12-16GB of RAM and 64bit server.  STM 5.1 that will be released in November has some scalability improvements that will help as well.

Any of agents can collect data from Vmware, arrays, FC switches to do the initial data collection and data formatting, but ultimately all the data flows thru the collector on the Storage Manager server.

Hope this helps, if not, please contact support for more advice.

Brian

iffarrukh · Answer

Hi Brian

Thanks for your response.

I am not looking to monitor physical servers remotely. I will install agents on all physical servers. I am looking to achieve load sharing.. As now when I will install agents on all physical machines. They will communicate with Stroage Manager and as there are a lot of physical machines. Storage Manger server would have a lot of load. I want to share that load..

So I was wondering if there is any option I can install another profiler/collector that talks to all other agents installed on physical servers and collect data or whatever task is require and put in DB instead of storage manager doing all processing.

( As an example Like we can assign FC, Arrays to different agent so that they can act as collector )

AS there are more than 700 physical server we need to monitor and storage manager will get heavier and heavier..

Would you please tell me if there is any way to do it or only strorage manager can act as a profiler/collector for physical machines?

Regards

Sam

bmrad · Answer

Sam

If you install an agent on the physical server you want to monitor, it asks for the IP of the server during the install.  Once the install is complete and the agents starts, it will self register and self configure with the Storage Manager Server.  Once your agents are installed, you can choose any of them to monitor other parts of the environment remotely (VMware, Storage Arrays, FC switches).

We do not monitor physical servers remotely, only virtual hosts and virtual machines.  If you want to monitor a physical server, you have to put an agent on it.

We recommend 1GB to handle monitoring other devices and applications (VMware, Storage Arrays) .  If the agent is only monitoring the server it is installed on (ie, not monitoring arrays or vmware), then it will use less space and can probably stay on the C: drive.  However, if you are doing a fresh install and D:  is your data drive, then go ahead and install it on the D drive.  All of data stored by the agent is in its directory, no data is stored in other directories.

Let me know if you have additional questions.

Brian