IBM Tivoli Monitoring > Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2 > Installation Guides > Installation Guide > Pre-deployment phase

IBM Tivoli Monitoring, Version 6.3 Fix Pack 2


Agent deployments

When planning your installation, you need to determine how you want to deploy your agents. For very small environments, some users manually install agents on each server. For larger environments, automation tools must be used to deploy the agents and agent patches.

A key decision point is to determine which deployment software to use. The Tivoli Monitoring product has a remote deployment capability that allows you to initially deploy your operating system agents remotely, and then remotely add agents to your systems.

Each product and fix pack includes a remote deployment bundle that can be placed in the remote deployment depot for future agent distributions and patching. However, the remote deployment capability is not as efficient at distributing software as some purchasable distribution products. If you already have an enterprise-class software distribution product like Tivoli Configuration Manager or Tivoli Provisioning Manager, you might find it more efficient to distribute the agents and patches. Tivoli Monitoring agents provide software package blocks that can be used by Tivoli Configuration Manager and Tivoli Provisioning Manager to distribute the agents.

The main advantage of using products such as Tivoli Configuration Manager and Tivoli Provisioning Manager are:

Use the tacmd exportBundles command to export one or more deployment bundles to the specified export directory for use with software distribution products. For more information see the Command Reference.

If you have an enterprise-class software distribution product, use it for the initial software distribution and for the deployment of larger fix packs. For interim fixes and small fix packs, the remote deployment capability might require less time to configure and utilize.

One of the most important aspects of agent deployment is the agent prerequisite preparation. Ensure that the servers are prepared with the appropriate file systems including adequate space. In addition to disk space, you must determine the user account to be used for the agent installation. By using an administrative account (administrator or root), you ease your agent deployment tasks.

If administrator or root are not allowed, then using sudo on a UNIX system is the next best choice. Without administrative authority, the installation becomes a multi-step process where the systems administrators need to be brought in to run commands such as setperm to setup the permissions. For planning purposes, plan for roughly 500 MB of disk space to allow space for the agent and historical logs.


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Pre-deployment phase

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