About servers

The Information tab for a server provides the following information:

• Summary of server information
• Properties of servers
• Custom attributes defined for a server
• History of server changes
• Server location

Summary of server information

The Summary view in the Device Explorer lists the following information:

• System: This displays operating system information.
• Computer: This displays server manufacturer, hardware, and system details.
• Agent: This displays communication status, the time when the server was last registered, and the number of SA applications. Servers that do not use an SA agent, such as VMware ESXi, will not display agent information. For more information on ESXi servers, see "Virtualization management" in Use.

Properties of servers

The Properties view in the Device Explorer lists the following information for the server that you are viewing:

• Management information for servers
• Custom fields defined for servers
• Reported information for servers
• Server modules

Management information for servers

The Management Information view in the Device Explorer lists the following information about the server that you are viewing:

• Name: This displays the name of the managed server.
• IP Address: This displays the IP address of the managed server.
• Description: This displays a text description of the server.
• Customer: This displays an account within Server Automation that has access to designated resources, such as servers and software.
• Facility: This displays the location of the server. Users can manage servers in any facility from a SA Client.
• Realm (link speed): This displays the minimum bandwidth limit between the Server Agent and the core (if the agent is going through gateways).
• Server Use (sometimes abbreviated to just Use): This property displays how an organization is using the managed server; for example, a server could be a staging server, a production server, a development server, and so on. You can set this value for your servers and use it to group and filter servers for management tasks or as a condition for inclusion in dynamic groups. For example, you could use this property to quickly locate all your staging servers. The predefined values are:

  • Not Specified - This is the default value for all servers.

  • Development - Servers are being used to develop business services.

  • Staging - Servers are in preparation before going into production.

  • Production - Servers are in production providing business services.

    You can add, delete or change the server use categories as follows:

  1. Log in to the SA Client as a user who has the Server Attributes permission set to Yes. This permission is required to change server use categories. For more information on permissions, see the SA Administer section.
  2. Select the Administration tab.
  3. Select Server Use which is under the Server Attributes node in the navigation pane. This displays all your currently defined server use categories.
  4. Use the Actions > New, Actions > Open and Actions > Delete menus or the New and Delete icons to create, modify and delete server use categories. You cannot modify or delete the Not Specified category.
• Server Lifecycle: This displays the server’s stage in the managed server lifecycle; for example, unprovisioned, available, managed, or deactivated.
• Reboot Required: This indicates whether or not the server needs to be rebooted, for example because a patch has been installed.
• OS Version: This displays the operating system (platform) that the managed server is running on.
• Deployment Stage (sometimes abbreviate to just Stage): This property displays the stages of deployment for a server; for example, a server could be live or offline or in deployment. You can set this value and use it to group and filter servers for management tasks or as a condition for inclusion in dynamic groups. For example, you could use this property to quickly locate all servers that are offline. The predefined values are:
  • Not Specified - This is the default value for all servers.
  • Offline - Servers are not in use
  • In Deployment - Servers are being prepared for use
  • Ops Ready - Servers are ready to be used.
  • Live - Servers are being actively used.

  You can add, delete or change the deployment stage categories as follows:

  1. Log in to the SA Client as a user who has the Server Attributes permission set to Yes. This permission is required to change deployment stage categories. For more information on permissions, see the SA Administer section.
  2. Select the Administration tab.
  3. Select Deployment Stage which is under the Server Attributes node in the navigation pane. This displays all your currently defined deployment stage categories.
  4. Use the Actions > New, Actions > Open and Actions > Delete menus or the New and Delete icons to create, modify and delete deployment stage categories. You cannot modify or delete the Not Specified category.
• Locale: This displays the server’s current locale setting.
• UUID: A unique identifier for the managed server.
• Object ID: This displays the internal identifier that SA uses to identify the server.
• Status: This displays whether or not the server is reachable and thus managed by SA. “OK” means that the server (its Server Agent) is reachable; unreachable means that there is a communication problem and SA cannot communicate with the server.

Custom fields defined for servers

This view lists the custom fields defined for the server and the value of each custom field and lets you edit the values.

SA can store a large amount of information about your managed servers. Custom fields provide a way for you to store additional information about your servers quickly and easily. Custom fields are data elements you can create for servers and other objects in SA.

For more information about custom fields, see Comparing custom fields and custom attributes and Custom fields.

Custom attributes are similar to custom fields. For more information about custom attributes, see Custom attributes defined for a server.

Reported information for servers

This view displays information about the server reported by the server agent. For more information on the server agent, see Manage the Server Agent.

• Reporting: This displays information about the ability of the server’s agent to communicate with the core. Statuses include Has not reported, OK, Registration in progress, and Reporting error.
• Agent Version: This displays the version number of the agent. This only applies to managed servers where a Server Agent is installed.
• Hostname: This displays the host name of the managed server.
• Reported OS: This displays the operating system (platform) that the managed server is running on.
• MAC Address: This displays the Media Access Control (MAC) address. This is the network interface card’s unique hardware number. The MAC address is used as the server’s physical address on the network.
• Serial Number: This displays the serial number of the system. Server Automation attempts to report a chassis ID if possible.
• Chassis ID: This displays a unique hardware-based identifier that the Server Agent discovers, typically derived from some property of the server's chassis. As a common source for this ID, Server Automation uses an interface's MAC address or the host ID on Solaris servers, or the serial number for one of the interfaces.
• Encoding: This displays the character encoding of the managed server, such as Shift_JIS (Japanese) or Windows 1252 (Western).

From this window, you can also open a remote terminal on the selected server.

Server modules

Server Modules are software modules that work with and extend the server agent to provide additional management capabilities for your servers. Most server modules are installed and managed automatically by the SA core and the server agent and do not require any administration or maintenance.

For example, the extensible discovery software module is installed automatically on servers when you perform an extensible discovery operation. For more information about extensible discovery, see the Running extensible discovery on managed servers.

The software discovery server module discovers and creates an inventory of unlicensed software, unregistered software, custom-built software and nonstandard software on your servers. For more information about software discovery, see "Software management" in Use.

Custom attributes defined for a server

This view displays the custom attributes attached to a server. You can add, edit or remove custom attributes from this view.

Custom attributes can be locally defined or inherited:

• Inherited: Custom attribute value inherits from another source, such as a customer, a facility, a software policy, ISM control, and so on.
• Locally Specific Value: Custom attribute is created directly on a servers.

To create a new custom attribute, click the Add icon, and then enter a value.

Overriding inherited custom attribute values

For all custom attributes that a server inherits from another source, such as from a customer or facility or device group, you can choose to override the inherited attribute’s value.

To override inherited custom attribute values:

1. In the SA Client, select Devices All Managed Servers.
2. Select a server.
3. Select the Actions menu or right click the server and select Open. This displays information about the selected server.
4. Select the Information tab.
5. Select Custom Attributes in the navigation pane. This displays all the custom attributes defined for the server. The Source column indicates where the custom attribute is defined, whether it is defined locally on the server or is defined by and inherited from another object.
6. For the inherited custom attribute you want to override, from the Source column select Overridden with Specified Value from the drop down list.
7. Enter a value in the Value field.

History of server changes

The History view shows changes made to the selected server. For example, it displays who modified a server, what change was made, when it was modified, and so on. Server History specifically shows when a user has performed one of the following actions:

• Added the server to a group
• Removed the server from a group
• Reassigned the server from one group to another
• Login sessions
• Jobs that were run on the server, such as snapshots, audits, patch and software policy remediations
• Custom attributes changes for servers

Entries are generated when actions are performed for managed servers in the SA Client. The History is read-only. Double-click an entry to see more detailed information, such as:

• Date: The date when the last change occurred.
• Device Name: Name of the server or device where the change was made.
• User: The user who made the change.
• Details: A description of the change.

Use the View drop-down list to sort the server history list according to a range of time, such as last week, the last two months, and so on.

Server location

The Server Location node shows an ProLiant server’s (BL Models only) physical location. The General category displays the following information:

• Rack: Rack number
• Enclosure: Enclosure name
• Bay: Server bay number
• Note: If the server is moved, the SA agent updates the server-location information during full hardware registration.