In my recent columns, I've focused on the capabilities of IBM Systems Director and other IBM i systems management products: Systems Director Navigator for i and System i Navigator. Now I'll step back a bit and spend some time positioning the three so you know what they are, what functions each one focuses on, and most importantly, when to use each one.

Common Questions
When I present these products to customers, we inevitably end up talking about a common set of questions all focused around how to position our three products that manage IBM i systems. I'll start at the most basic, then get more detailed, as the questions usually tend to go. For a quick, side-by-side comparison of the three products, see the "cheat sheet" in Figure 1.

What Are They?
IBM Systems Director is a web-based, centralized management product that's designed to manage all the IBM platforms in your data center. It contains a rich set of capabilities in the base and also provides optional plug-ins to extend its functionality.

System i Navigator is a Windows-installed, centralized management product that's designed to manage all your IBM i operating systems. It contains both multisystem functionality in its Management Central area as well as deep one-on-one IBM i management functionality.

Director Navigator for i is an embedded web interface that's designed to manage a single IBM i OS. It focuses entirely on one-on-one IBM i management and contains more than 300 tasks for IBM i management.

What Do They Manage?
IBM Systems Director can manage hardware, virtual resources, OSs, storage, and other resources in your data center. For example, IBM Systems Director can manage your Power Systems, Hardware Management Console (HMC), System x, and BladeCenter hardware and firmware as well as storage and network hardware. You can manage virtual environments such as PowerVM, VMware, z/VM, Microsoft Virtual Server, and Xen. You can also manage IBM i, Windows, AIX, and Linux OSs. Additionally, you can manage SNMP resources such as printers.

System i Navigator can manage multiple IBM i instances. Through the My Connections area, you can manage detailed IBM i resources such as jobs, users, system values, database resources, printers, printer output, and messages. Through the Management Central area, you can centrally manage multiple IBM I OSs.

Director Navigator for i can manage a single IBM i instance. It's very similar to System i Navigator's My Connections capabilities in that you can mange jobs, users, system values, database resources, and messages.

What Kinds of Functions Does Each Have?
IBM Systems Director is IBM's flagship systems management product for managing IBM systems. From IBM Systems Director, you can discover, collect inventory, monitor, and set thresholds for critical situations. You can automate your management from simple notification to running OS commands to triggering other IBM Systems Director tasks such as relocating, power on/off, or command-line commands. You can manage virtual environments, configure BladeCenter chassis and their switches, and manage energy usage. You can update the firmware for IBM hardware and update your IBM i, AIX, and Linux OSs. IBM Systems Director also provides blade fabric management, service and support, topology mapping, and storage management, Furthermore, IBM is regularly developing additional plug-ins to add even more functionality.

System i Navigator provides the ability to manage one or many IBM i OSs. You can dive deep to manage jobs, messages, printer output, security, and databases in a single IBM i OS. You can also use the Management Central function to centrally manage many IBM i OSs. Using Management Central, you can monitor system status, jobs, and messages. You can compare and update system values. You can collect inventory and search it for fixes, users, hardware, software, and system values and manage the results. For example, you can disable all users who haven't signed on for a week and compare and update missing fixes across your IBM i systems compared to a model system.

Director Navigator for i is focused on managing a single IBM i instance. It contains basically the same functions as the My Connections section of System i Navigator, but because it's web-based, you don't need to install any software on your PC. Director Navigator contains some unique capabilities, such as performance management and high-availability solutions.

Where Can I Install Them?
IBM Systems Director is a three-tier application: console-server-agent. Since Systems Director is web-based, there's nothing to install for the console, other than a supported web browser. The IBM Systems Director server can be installed on IBM servers running Windows, AIX, or Linux. You can also install the IBM Systems Director server on a virtual server managed by PowerVM or VMware. For the managed systems IBM Systems Director manages, it supports three levels of agents. Some platforms don't require any agent (e.g., HMC). But for deeper OS management capabilities, you'll want to install either the platform agent or common agent. The agents can be installed on IBM i, AIX, Linux, and Windows. You can also install IBM Systems Director agents on Linux and Windows running on non-IBM x86 hardware to widen your management scope.

System i Navigator is installed on a Windows workstation. It then communicates directly with an IBM i OS, so there's nothing additional to install on IBM i.

Director Navigator for i is web-based, so there's nothing to install on your PC, other than a supported web browser. Additionally, since Director Navigator is already embedded into IBM i 6.1, there's nothing additional to install there, either.

What Are the Layout and Resource Navigation Differences?
Since IBM Systems Director is web-based, it has a standard, and collapsible, task navigation area on the left and a main workspace. It provides a variety of ways to navigate your data center resources. One way to do so is to open Navigate Resources. This task shows the static and dynamic groups. You simply click a group to see its contents or click a system to see its properties. The Inventory category contains a number of views as well. Virtual Servers and Hosts, for example, show all the physical servers that host virtual environments, along with all the virtual servers. Find a Resource is a good way to search for resources by name. Finally, for any resource, you can right-click to find Related Resources and Topology Perspectives. The first lets you see a list of related storage volumes, for example. The second shows a topology map of multiple related resources. Any task can be added as a Starting Page, so that when you log on, the desired tasks are shown immediately.

System i Navigator is the traditional "explorer" view in Windows with a resource tree on the left and a table on the right. You can create static groups of endpoints you want to manage and also right-click to see a system's properties.

Director Navigator for i is already running on the system it's managing, so there is no need to navigate to a new system. However, since Director Navigator is web-based, major categories of tasks are listed in the navigation area and the main workpage shows tables and other views. You can also select any desired view as a Starting Page.

How Do I Control Access for Users Who Manage Systems?
IBM Systems Director provides role-based access to any task in the product. Additionally, you can assign a user access to all systems or to a set of specific groups. Since all management tasks are grouped by major categories, you can create your own roles (if the shipped ones aren't enough) to customize what tasks a user can perform and for those tasks, which systems they can perform them on.

System i Navigator uses Application Administration to control access. However, since System i Navigator is run remotely on a PC, simply setting the Application Administration settings doesn't guarantee that your system is secure. You'll need to be sure you have object-level access to the commands, services, and objects on your system.

Director Navigator for i also uses Application Administration. In fact, if you update an Application Administration setting, it will take effect in both System i Navigator and Director Navigator for i.

What Can I Monitor?
Since IBM Systems Director can manage so many different platforms, it's ideally suited for monitoring your hardware, virtual layers, and OSs. You can set thresholds on a variety of metrics ranging from performance (CPU, memory, storage), to file monitoring, job monitoring, message monitoring, and system level metrics such as user count. Each OS has literally hundreds of monitors to set thresholds on. Once thresholds are set, you can automate many types of actions. Email yourself, run a custom CL program, relocate your Linux virtual server, run a Windows command on your integrated server, or perform many other actions.

System i Navigator is ideal for monitoring deep metrics for system health, jobs, and messages. Although IBM Systems Director monitors several of these metrics, System i Navigator monitors them in more detail. In addition, the Graph History function is a great way to see historical data over a longer period of time.

Navigator for i doesn't have any realtime monitoring directly, but it does have the Performance Management function, which gives you historical graphing that can be manipulated and saved.

Which Is Better? What Should I Use When?
This is one I always end up with. The answer is really based on what kinds of functions you want to perform and how many systems you want to manage. Do you have just one IBM i OS? Then Director Navigator for i might be all right for you. Its database management function is hard to beat (especially the topology views in Database Navigator). Director Navigator for i provides fast, direct access to your OS. However, even if you want to manage only one system, IBM Systems Director's monitoring, automation, and patch updates could be worth your while.

If you have multiple IBM i instances, System i Navigator's detailed job monitoring and PTF management might be worth looking into. However, even with multiple IBM i systems, you have a physical server to manage updates for and probably an HMC as well. For this, you'd want to use IBM Systems Director. And, if your data center is filled with different kinds of IBM platforms, IBM Systems Director is definitely something you should look into.

Put Them Together!
One thing to note is that IBM Systems Director also has integrated into it all the Navigator for i functionality. This means that if you use IBM Systems Director pointing to an IBM i OS (6.1 or 5.4), you can use the integrated Navigator for i function. This is possible even on IBM i 5.4 because the code uses many of the same APIs.

Additionally, if you have to use System i Navigator's monitors, you can also use the genevent command in IBM i to trigger IBM Systems Director tasks. This allows you to still do the deep monitoring in Management Central but then create an event that gets sent to IBM Systems Director where your automation can take over.

Find Out More
Learn more about IBM i systems management products:
"Hand Off Management Tasks to IBM Systems Director 6.1" (June 2009, article ID 63547)
"The Little Extras in IBM Director" (October 2008, article ID 61514)
"Inside Systems Management: Controlling Access in IBM Director" (September 2008, article ID 62055)
"Scheduling in IBM Director" (April 2008, article ID 21234)
"Managing Jobs in IBM Director" (February 2008, article ID 21137)

IBM Systems Director website: www.ibm.com/systems/management/director/
IBM Information Center – Systems Director 6.1 Roadmap: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/director/v6r1x/index.jsp?topic=/director_6.1/fqm0_r_roadmap.html
IBM Information Center – IBM Systems Director Navigator for i: http://publib.boulder.ibm.com/infocenter/iseries/v6r1m0/index.jsp?topic=/rzahg/rzahginav.htm

About the Author
Greg Hintermeister (gregh@us.ibm.com) works at IBM as a user experience designer and is an IBM master inventor. He has extensive experience designing user interaction for IBM Systems Director, IBM Virtualization Manager, System i Navigator, mobile applications, and numerous web applications. Greg is a regular speaker at user groups and technical conferences.