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Updated: February 22, 2013 |
In addition to the specific implementation needs for an individual product's layers, there are some general guidelines that you should adhere to. These include
Regardless of the size and scope of your implementation, the use of a lab environment, in which to test your architecture and your customizations is highly recommended. CA strongly recommends that you establish a testing (laboratory) facility that replicates, to the greatest extent possible, your production environment, including all unique configurations and customizations. While a laboratory may be used only for the purpose of migration testing, CA Best Practice encourages clients to establish a standing laboratory for the testing of all new configurations, customizations, incremental fixes, and OS/CA Service Packs.
The primary components of CA distributed solutions are run on either Windows, Linux or UNIX operating systems. The following are general notes regarding those platforms, based on the latest product releases. Specific requirements will depend on which platform you are using, which release and which components you are deploying and what other software is running on the target machines.
Windows General Issues:
- May be Windows 2003 Standard, Enterprise, Datacenter and Small Business server (32-bit version only), Windows XP Professional (32 bit version only) or Windows 2008
- Windows "client" platforms (e.g., Windows XP, Windows 200x Professional, Vista etc.) not supported for enterprise Managers but are supported for some product "client" components (e.g., CMS UI and agents, Management Command Center, Event and System Agents, browser and many "fat client" UIs)
- TCP/IP and SNMP services (all products require TCP/IP and some require or use SNMP)
- Need normalized DNS or same /etc/hosts definitions everywhere
UNIX\Linux General Issues
- UNIX server class system, except for agent-only systems - 2 GB RAM minimum.
- Ensure CPU/memory/disk is not currently overloaded. Check amount of available/free resources and veriy at least 6 GB minimum free disk space for installation (including local MDB)
- Recommend swap space be configured for at least twice the RAM.
- Default CA product file structure and user id recommended
On a final note, the keys to a successful solution deployment are as follows:
- Plan, plan and plan some more: One of the biggest mistakes of any implementation is the failure to plan and that plan should identify among other things, goals, policies, metrics, the implementation architecture, failover considerations, lab requirements and staging procedures. Your plan for your current implementation
should also include plans for expansion (e.g., in the event a new management tier needs to be added)
- Know your architecture - and where it is going! Trying to plan an architecture without a full awareness of existing firewalls, DNS configurations and network standards (to name a few) is pointless. Review the recommendations provided earlier in this section, verify that the information you have is still accurate and identify any pending changes. While lab testing should occur in a controlled environment, deployment occurs in a living, evolving environment. Be aware of upcoming changes - plans to expand, change hardware, software or networking conventions, can all impact your plan.
- Understand and adhere to established "best practices" Best Practices" are those procedures which have been tested and found to be the most efficient and most reliable. They can be established for all aspects of the software life cycle in your organization from design to deployment to day-to-day administration. Following established best practices is the best way to ensure a successful implementation in your environment. You will find best practices documented in many sections throughout this CD as well as posted to the CA Technical Support website.
- Understand the business needs and goals - This will help you set priorities and identify the necessary customizations.
- Customize! Fine tune through policy, customize the Event Console to weed out extraneous messages and adjust your CA NSM implementation to suit your particular environment and business needs. Customization should not be too general - you should not be forwarding all messages, bridging all objects or creating all inclusive
BPVs - and you should use management tiers wisely.
- Do not exceed scalability guidelines - to ensure the best, most reliable performance. Monitor consumption of key resources: CPU should not exceed 80% avg, monitor memory to ensure no or minimal physical disk paging, monitor network latency and available bandwidth, and do not forget database requirements.
- Avoid inconsistency - in approach, in naming conventions, in procedures....
- Plan for Administration - identify the day to day tasks that will be performed, how changes will be made, what type of maintenance will be needed, who will be performing those tasks and what type of training they will need. This includes periodic database maintenance (backups, defragmentation, index rebuilds). It does you no good to have a great tool and no one who knows how to use it (or use it properly)!