Installing and managing agents

You can use the IBM® Flex System Manager management software web interface to install and manage agents on compute nodes that are managed by the management software.

Operating-system agents serve as the control point for accessing operating system and host information that might not be accessible through an out-of-band interface. These agents run on operating-system-based and hardware-based endpoints, called systems, that can be discovered and managed by the management software. The level of system management depends on the agent that is installed on the system: Common Agent or Platform Agent. Each agent provides a different footprint size, level of performance, and set of management functions.

If your IBM Flex System hardware consists only of X-Architecture compute nodes, and you use management software for basic hardware management, such as firmware updates, you might not need Common Agent or Platform Agent. If you have IBM Power Systems™ compute nodes, or you need virtualization or file management, you might need Platform Agent, Common Agent services, or both.