Administration Guide › Configuring Resources › How to Configure AIX NIM Imaging › Dynamic NIM Machine Resource Support

Dynamic NIM Machine Resource Support

CA Server Automation provides a web service method to create NIM machine resources dynamically in a NIM environment. An IP address is provided to the method to determine which NIM master has the NIM network resource to support it. The method only creates the NIM machine resource if it does not exist for that address.

The resources are created using the following convention:

ca_UUID

UUID is a randomly generated UUID. The web service method that deletes a NIM machine resource only deletes NIM machines created by CA Server Automation. If the NIM master is removed from CA Server Automation configuration and then added back later, all NIM machines created by the web service before the configuration change are no longer considered for deletion. All CA Server Automation creation records are removed when the NIM master is removed from configuration.

The Imaging Service exposes the web services but only external consumers (such as Reservation Manager) decide how to use them.

Specific required and optional properties are used to create a NIM machine. CA Server Automation uses default properties defined in the NIM Machine group in the caimgconf.cfg file. Properties are global and apply to all NIM masters. You can update these values to suit your environment.

Environment requirements for the web services include:

• NIM network resources must already be defined in the NIM environment.
• NIM network resources cannot have overlapping network address ranges, including network resources that are defined on the same NIM master and across multiple NIM master servers.
• IP addresses must be DNS-resolvable.
• NIM machines are created without a CPUID.