Overview of the Flex System Manager management node

The Flex System Manager management node is a systems management appliance that drives efficiency and cost savings in the data center.

Note: The initial configuration of your Flex System Manager is performed by the Services Team and is included with your purchase. To ensure initial configuration success, it is important that you do not change the default shipped configuration until these services are complete.

The Flex System Manager node provides a pre-integrated and virtualized management environment across servers, storage, and networking that is easily managed from a single interface. A single focus point for seamless multi-chassis management provides an instant and resource-oriented view of chassis and chassis resources for X-Architecture compute nodes. You can reduce the number of interfaces, steps, and clicks it takes to manage IT resources, intelligently manage, and deploy workloads that are based on resource availability and predefined policies. You can also manage events and alerts to increase system availability and reduce downtime while reducing operational costs.

On a practical level, the Flex System Manager provides the ability for you to perform standard system management tasks. Every day activities include taking hardware and software inventory in the environment, the constant monitoring of critical systems, establishing compliance baseline for future patching and upgrade services. Every day activities also include health status metrics to allow the support team to better detect potential issues in a timely manner.

The capabilities of the Flex System Manager node include:

A management appliance on a special compute node
A single user interface to manage multiple chassis
Hardware setup, configuration, and status
System element updates and fixes
User management and security
System element time and date
Remote access to and control of system elements
Service and support management
Virtualization management
Storage management
Network management
Additional systems management applications (both Lenovo and third-party applications)

The initial focus of the Flex System Manager node is on the management of the Flex System Enterprise Chassis. In addition, it can also be the portal for the administration of the storage and network modules and the manipulation of the virtualization objects on X-Architecture compute nodes. In your virtual environment, the Flex System Manager interface helps with workload alerting, workload capture, and rapid workload deployments. This single management point has the capability to monitor both virtual systems and physical systems, construct a new virtual system environment, import virtual appliance packages into the environment, and create system pools to optimize resource utilization.

The tool within the Flex System Manager node that is responsible for the lifecycle management of virtual resources is called VMControl. This single tool is capable of managing various types of hypervisors that include the ability to create virtual servers, relocate virtual servers, remove and import virtual servers, and capture existing workloads. The tool also can rebalance workloads and create a virtual image repository to accelerate future workload deployments. This single interface delivers enterprise class management of virtual objects across heterogeneous virtualization technologies and hardware platforms.