Chapter 2. Architecture 27
Job Scheduler
IBM Tivoli Storage Resource Manager deploys monitoring activities via an
embedded Job Scheduler. This Job Scheduler controls when to run Discovery,
Ping, Probe, Scan, and Quota checking jobs. It provides robust scheduling
functionality and the flexibility to specify exactly when to run monitoring jobs, as
well as other functions such as running scripts and creating reports.
Agents
The Agent component is installed on each machine containing storage that you
want to monitor. The Agent component runs in the background and deploys
monitoring jobs such as Pings, Probes, and Scans. It interacts with the Job
Scheduler and deploys monitoring jobs according to the schedules that you have
defined.
This allows an Agent to:
Detect low-level problems, such as grown defects in the hardware containing
the storage information.
Keep track of information such as the uptime/downtime of the machine on
which it is running.
Return information to the server from the scans and probes.
Agents receive jobs to be run from a server’s scheduling service and then
contact the server for the job definition. Once this has been successfully
completed, no further communication to the server is required until the job is
completed.
Probes
A probe gathers local hardware and general filesystem information on a machine
where an Agent is installed. Use probes to discover information about new or
removed disks and filesystems and gather CPU, memory, and operating system
level information. The probe relies on local system calls and APIs.
A proxy probe is required for systems on which IBM Tivoli Storage Resource
Manager does not support an Agent (for example, on most NAS devices and
Netware servers). A proxy probe on these devices will use SNMP queries to
gather hardware information and CIFS, NFS, NCP commands to gather volume
and file system information. Again, see Figure 2-5 on page 26 for a depiction of
this.