SAM wants EVERYONEb,"s input!

[SAM TEAM]

Greetings! We are investigating new things for SAM and system administration tools, and NEED to hear from you. It is your awesome feedback that helps drive our future direction!

Below is a very short mix of questions. Please take a minute and help us understand how we can work to make things better suited for YOU in future releases. When answering the following questions and wherever possible, please provide feedback on administration as a whole and not towards just SAM. Your time and input, like always, is greatly appreciated!

The SAM team

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1. Many tools in the industry are becoming web-based, therefore using web servers. On the systems in your environment, would it be acceptable to have an Apache web server installed on every system? The web server would only run when needed. Explain.

2. How important is a terminal user interface, or TUI, in your workday? If you use a TUI, what problems does it solve? Is a web-based GUI complimented with a command line an acceptable replacement for the TUI if they were to support the same functionality?

3. What types of system monitoring would be valuable to you? (e.g. HP-UX 11.22 allows some kernel parameters to be monitored)

4. Concerning disk and file system management (LVM included), we plan to address speed and LVM support. What other features would you like to see in a GUI? Would you like to see other features in the commands? This can be whatever you want it to be; the possibilities are endless!

[Brian Street_1 · Accepted solution]

SAM Team,

One of the features I was always fond of with (don't flame me, please) using smit on AIX was that they had a command button where one could see the exact command that was being run.

This was great in a couple of ways...it helped me understand what was happening underneath the gui level (and I've always been a command line kind of guy) and I could cut and paste the command into a script.

my $0.02,
Brian Street.

[Michael Tully]

Apache comes with the OS these days in any case, so yes it would not be a bad idea to have sam sit on it.

We still use a number of dedicated system consoles. In normal day to day tasks we use PC's with an X based emulator.

As far as monitoring goes we are in the midst of evaluation certain pieces of software from various places. Perhaps some forms of monitoring allowed from glance could be included.

We try as much as as possible and it is encouraged to use the command line for disk and file system management. For me to suggest what SAM could have ... faster for sure, it is extremely slow, although it is better than 10.20 where 'ioscan' used to an eternity.

For Brian, the command lines that sam uses are shown under Options 'view SAM log'

Cheers
Michael

[Sridhar Bhaskarla]

Hi,

1. I would not like to install anything that I don't need on the system. So, I won't suggest to have Apache installed on every system.

2. Web based GUI is not a good idea. However, I always liked TUI. It's faster than GUI and I don't have to worry about Xstuff if I am working from a PC.

3. Whatever EMS is offering now is good. Will be very happy to see other kernel parameters included.

4. I hate to say this but you can probably consider the features offered by VxVM GUI. We are currently lacking a good GUI for LVM though we are satisfied with it's simplicity.

-Sri

[S.K. Chan]

1- We would accept it if it's only for the servers (800s). In our environment the end user workstations (700s), we tend to minimize the installation of system tools. This is because we do not want to spend too much time doing detail troubleshooting on workstation. For example if there is any hint of any hardware problem, we'll just replace it. Basically we pay more attention to the servers instead.
2- Not to me because I hated GUI , however if it's web-based I should think it's fine. BUT please do not replace the good-ol-reliable TUI interface, be it "monconfig" or "cstm" which I have gotten so used to. Give us (the sysadmins) more choices but don't take away what's already in place.
3- The existing avilable tools (whether it's bundled with the OS or need-to-purchased) are sufficient.
4- I'll leave this question alone as I'm not a fan of GUI interface. It would be nice though if disk and fs mgt (incl LVM) GUI can be separated from SAM. Speed and reliability is definately a major factor in making this work.

[Yogeeraj_1]

1.
That should be OK. We are aleady running apache on most of our servers.


2.
TUI over a WAN or through a SSH connection through the Internet by far outweighs all possible advantages of a Web-based GUI. Bandwidth is still costly in most parts of the world.


3.
- Process, CPU/DISK/MEM/SWAP utilisation and System Tables. Most of these is provided by Glance.
- System messages


4.
Monitoring support in GUI is most important. For disk and file system management, most of us still prefer command line interface.

Best Regards
Yogeeraj

[Stefan Farrelly]

1. Yes - it would be acceptable to run Apache on every servers AS LONG as it doesnt use much memory or hog the cpu - or potentially lock up. Using Java with Apache increases this risk significantly. But - my personal preference is to keep the existing text/gui SAM.

2. A web-based gui is acceptable but on ocassion when the network is shagged and you only have the console the tui is obviously necessary! - or when your X emulator wont run on your PC and you only have telnet access then the tui is again necesary. The tui is also faster than the gui so I often use it for that reason when in a hurry.

3. All kernel parameter monitoring would be useful - the more the merrier. Especially all the system tables (extending what you can see in gpm now) - seeing their usage, planning when theyre nearing full so we can increase them before something falls over.

4. It would be nice to have the full range of LVM commands incorporated into the LVM gui menus - eg. striping using manual (extent-based), or distributed, doing pvmoves, lvm warning you that if you extend a striped vol then you need to add X disks first, eg. Just make it more intuative. Also more support for common disk subsystems - eg. EMC.

[Donald Kok]

Hi SAM,

1 Apache won't be a problem, as long as it does not interfere with other running apache processes.
2 TUI works (virtualy) always (console, through telnet, through LAN/WEBconsole ...) In case of trouble I want to be sure that this is available.
3 For monitoring there are other tools.
4 Maybe a graphical display of the disks and VG's. Where is free space.

[H.Merijn Brand (procura]

I fully agree with Michael Tully here.

1. Apache is not an option in our environment, because it conflicts with eWave, a server we have to run for customer Web) applications. [ Not that I like it, but it's not my choice. I want TUI's :) ]

2. *ALL* of out consoles are TUI. AIX and HP-UX. Day to day work is done from my workstation with Reflection-X or Cygwin/XFree, but low-level system actions are don on the console terminal. (swinstall is done from X11).

3. We have Glance and GPM, and I only use it when I suspect things to misbehave.

4. Integrated OnlineJFS (for free :), Integrated defragmentation (with GUI and progress, also for free of course). FYI AIX has both as standard for their JFS, no extra costs.

Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn

[Pete Randall]

Thanks for asking!

1. If you'll throw in a free processor on each of my systems to run the damn web server that I have absolutely no other use for, I guess maybe it would be all right. Otherwise forget it.

2. Absolutely, unequivocably required! Not important, not kind of necessary: required!

3. At the very least, the Glance system tables output should be included, other Glance features would be nice.

4. I'll just borrow from Merijn for this one:
"Integrated OnlineJFS (for free :), Integrated defragmentation (with GUI and progress, also for free of course). FYI AIX has both as standard for their JFS, no extra costs."


Pete