Job Management Partner 1/Software Distribution Description and Planning Guide

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2.10.4 Maintaining system configuration information

In order to manage the system configuration, you must maintain the system configuration information. This subsection describes how to search for added hosts and register them into host groups, as well as how to search for hosts whose registration is duplicated and delete unneeded hosts. It also describes how to automatically delete hosts whose inventory information or software operation information has not been updated for a specified period of time, as well as hosts whose registration has been duplicated. Additionally, this subsection describes how to automatically assign new hosts added to the system configuration to appropriate host groups and ID groups on the basis of conditions created in advance.

Organization of this subsection
(1) Manual maintenance of system configuration information
(2) Automatic maintenance of system configuration information
(3) Automatic maintenance of host groups
(4) Automatic maintenance of ID groups
(5) Automatic maintenance of directory information

(1) Manual maintenance of system configuration information

From the System Configuration window or Destination window of JP1/Software Distribution Manager, you can search for the destinations that satisfy a specified condition. There are three types of searches:

You use these search functions to maintain the system configuration information, such as by copying the resulting hosts to the Destination window or deleting them from the system configuration information.

Note that you can execute searches by date and searches for duplicate hosts only from the System Configuration window.

For details about how to manually maintain the system configuration information using the search functions, see 9.1 Maintaining the system configuration information manually in the Setup Guide.

(2) Automatic maintenance of system configuration information

You can maintain the system configuration information by automatically detecting unneeded hosts and deleting them from the system configuration information, host groups, and ID groups. This function is called automatic system configuration maintenance. There are two types of automatic system configuration maintenance:

The deletion processing occurs once a day starting at a specified time. Note that automatic system configuration maintenance does not delete the following hosts:

The information that is automatically deleted when a client is deleted from the system configuration information is the same as in manual system configuration maintenance. For details, see 9.1.5 Deleting a host from the system configuration information in the Setup Guide.

To use automatic system configuration maintenance, the JP1/Software Distribution system must satisfy the following conditions:

(3) Automatic maintenance of host groups

Methods of maintaining created host groups include editing them in the Destination window or importing data from a file. However, in a large-scale system with thousands of hosts, it is onerous for the system administrator to add and delete host groups frequently.

JP1/Software Distribution provides a facility that monitors the system configuration information to detect new hosts and moved hosts, and that adds the detected hosts to appropriate host groups on the basis of predefined grouping conditions (policy). This facility is called automatic maintenance of host groups. Such maintenance is performed at the following times:

The following figure shows an overview of automatic maintenance of host groups.

Figure 2-54 Overview of automatic maintenance of host groups

[Figure]

Maintenance of host groups can be performed at any time, not just upon notification of information from clients. Therefore, hosts registered in the system configuration information can be added to host groups in batches according to a created policy at any time (Apply Policies to All Hosts).

For details about how to apply policies to host groups, see 9.3.2 Applying policies to all host groups in the Setup Guide.

You can also create policies from a file. By importing or exporting such files, you can back up or swap existing policies in and out. For details on creating a policy from a file, see 9.5 Creating a policy from a file in the Setup Guide.

(4) Automatic maintenance of ID groups

As a rule, the client determines which created ID groups it will join. If you prefer that the managing server assign clients to groups, you can configure the system to register clients automatically based on whether they satisfy specified conditions. This is a more efficient and consistent way of registering clients into ID groups than performing such maintenance using the Destination window or by importing files.

The operations involved in setting conditions (a policy) for each ID group and automatically registering clients into ID groups is called automatic maintenance of ID groups.

The following two types of policies are available for automatic maintenance of ID groups:

The following figure provides an overview of automatic maintenance of ID groups.

Figure 2-55 Overview of automatic maintenance of ID groups

[Figure]

For details about how to use automatic maintenance of ID groups, see 9.4 Automatic maintenance of ID groups in the Setup Guide.

As with automatic maintenance of host groups, you can create a policy from a file (for details, see 9.5 Creating a policy from a file in the Setup Guide).

Also note that before you use automatic maintenance of ID groups to execute a job, you must have already executed the job for that ID group.

For example, if there is a job that you always want to execute when you first install a client on a PC, by executing the job on that ID group beforehand, and then setting the newly added client to that ID group as a policy, you can configure JP1/Software Distribution so that it automatically executes the job for newly added clients.

The following figure shows the job flow when automatic maintenance of ID groups is used.

Figure 2-56 Job flow when automatic maintenance of ID groups is used

[Figure]

(5) Automatic maintenance of directory information

To maintain directory information, acquire the latest information from Active Directory. Import the directory information whenever the Active Directory information is updated.

To acquire the directory information, execute the directory information acquisition command (dcmadsync.exe). By registering this command as a task in the Windows Task Scheduler, you can periodically import the latest information from Active Directory. You can also link with JP1/AJS to execute the command periodically.