Owner's Manual

Introducing IT Assistant 9
Introducing IT Assistant
Dell OpenManage™ IT Assistant provides a central point of access to monitor and manage systems
on a local area network (LAN) or wide area network (WAN). By allowing an administrator a
comprehensive view across the enterprise, IT Assistant can increase system uptime, automate
repetitive tasks, and prevent interruption in critical business operations.
Simplifying System Administration
Using IT Assistant, you can:
• Identify the groups of systems that you want to manage remotely.
• Consolidate your view of all systems, giving you a central launch point for managing them.
• Create alert filters and actions that will automatically notify you when system uptime is affected.
• Create customized enterprise-wide reports that provide a detailed inventory of each system.
• Create customized tasks that allow you to coordinate configuration management across the entire
enterprise, including software update, device control (shutdown/wake up), and
command line execution.
Identifying the Groups of Systems for Remote Management
IT Assistant performs basic discovery and status polling, allowing system administrators to identify
systems and devices on a network by host name, IP address, or IP subnet range. During a status poll,
IT Assistant queries the health, or status, of a system and its components. Information that is
gathered during discovery and status polling is displayed in the management console and written to
the IT Assistant database. The default database is the Microsoft
®
Database Engine (MSDE) 2000.
Users who require a more powerful database can use Microsoft SQL Server.
Consolidating a View of All Your Systems
IT Assistant allows system administrators to take actions on managed systems from the management
console. Using IT Assistant, you can create tasks that apply to a single system or each system in the
group, create dynamic groups of systems to facilitate management, and conduct inventory on any
system. In addition, IT Assistant provides a consolidated launch point for the following
Dell™ systems management applications and devices: Dell OpenManage Server Administrator,
Dell OpenManage Array Manager, Remote Access Console, Dell PowerConnect™, and Digital
Keyboard/Video/Mouse (KVM).