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The Array Manager Console

Dell OpenManage™ Array Manager 2.5 User's Guide

  Overview of Console Features

  Configuring the Console

The Array Manager console provides a graphical way to see all the objects in your system. The Array Manager console display shows a tree view on the left and an expanded view of a selected tree view item on the right.

Array Manager allows you to customize your console layout and make a custom product that is more convenient to use. You can add or remove display categories, customize headers, resize columns, and change colors of the graphical layout.


Overview of Console Features

The Array Manager console display has the following features:

If you are viewing Array Manager running on an NT 4.0 computer, you will see two tabbed views in the right pane, General and Events, as shown in the screen below.

On the other hand, on a Windows 2000 Array Manager console screen, four tabbed views appear: General, Events, Disk View, and DM View, as shown in the screen that follows.

For more detail on the tabbed views, see the topic The Right Pane later in this chapter.

Note: For NetWare users, the Array Manager console provides a graphical way to see other NetWare servers and storage objects. Because Array Manager does not support creating dynamic volumes on NetWare servers, you will not see the Disks and Volumes storage objects in the console view of those servers.

The Left Pane

The left pane shows the objects detected by the Array Manager software. In the example screen below, the local computer object, DELL4, is at the top. The other major storage objects are Arrays, Disks, and Volumes. By clicking the plus sign (+) in front of a storage object, you can see the subordinate storage objects under that object.

Arrays

Arrays represent the physical and logical storage subsystems connected to RAID controllers.

Disks

Disks represent the disks recognized by the Microsoft® Windows NT® or Windows 2000® operating system. This can include regular hard disks, CD-ROM drives and other removable media, and virtual disks created through Array Manager.

Volumes

Volumes include dynamic RAID volumes created in Array Manager, primary and extended partitions, logical drives associated with extended partitions, and RAID volumes created in NT 4.0 Disk Administrator.

My Network Places

This icon works exactly like the My Network Places icon in the My Computer window of the Windows NT 4.0 or Windows 2000 operating system.

History

Array Manager uses History to store a list of the most recent connections made from the computer. You may want to delete some computer names from the History list. To delete a computer name from the History list, right-click the name and select Remove Computer from the context menu that appears.

Favorites

You can use the Favorites option for easy storage and retrieval of frequently used computer names. The Favorites option lets you display and retrieve NetWare server names, as well as other computers.

For more information on the console's storage objects, see The Array Manager Storage Model section in the Storage Management Concepts chapter.

The Right Pane

The right pane identifies the various objects and their status, and displays any error conditions that may exist. The screen below shows the right pane console view on a Windows NT 4.0 console with its two tabbed views, General and Events.

The four tabbed views in the Windows 2000 right pane console view are shown in the following screen. It includes the General, Events, Disk View, and DM View tabs.

The sections that follow describe the right pane's four tabbed views:

General

The objects you select in the console's tree view determine what parameters display in the right pane's General tab. The parameters are briefly discussed as follows:

You can change the sort order of columns. First, click on a header, such as Name, and either an up or down arrow will display (indicating the current sort of the column—ascending or descending). Then click on the arrow to reverse the sort. The arrow appears only for a short time. You can also right-click on a header and the context menu that comes up has commands for ascending and descending sort. If you left-click or right-click on a header and do not get the sort arrow or the sort menu commands, the column most likely is not sortable because it contains storage objects that are displayed in a hierarchical order.

Events

The Events tab displays event log messages associated with storage objects.

For more information on the Events tab, see the Event Monitoring chapter.

Disk View

You will see the Disk View only on the Windows 2000 console. It will not appear if you are running Array Manager on a Windows NT 4.0 machine. The Disk View tab displays a view similar to that in Disk Administrator in Windows NT 4.0 and Disk Management in Windows 2000. It has a graphical layout of the disks on your system, including CD-ROMs or other removable media. As with the tree view and General tab view, right-clicking on an object or portion of the window relating to an object brings up a context menu that has commands related to the object.

DM View

The DM View tab appears only on the Windows 2000 console.You will not see it this tab if you are running Array Manager on a Windows NT 4.0 machine.The DM View tab displays the information for the Windows 2000 Disk Management snap-in, which is also called LDM (Logical Disk Manager). Disk Management is the built-in disk and volume manager that comes with Windows 2000.

The DM View tab is grayed out in an Array Manager console when it is connected to a local or remote Array Manager for Windows 2000 server machine. That is because Array Manager for Windows 2000 and Disk Management cannot run on the same computer. Array Manager for Windows 2000 is an upgrade that replaces the Disk Management product during installation. For details, see the section More on the Array Manager and Disk Management Relationship at the end of the Overview chapter.

The reason that the DM View tab exists on the Windows 2000 console is that you can remotely connect from a Windows 2000 console to a server with Disk Management. Once you make the connection to the server with Disk Management, the DM View will become active. Because Array Manager for Windows 2000 and Disk Management are related products, you can connect to the server with Disk Management and view and manage its storage. Refer to the Windows 2000 Disk Management online help for details on how the function works.


Configuring the Console

To customize the Array Manager console display, you can add or remove categories, customize headers, resize columns, and change the colors in the graphical layout. Topics in this section include:

Change the Array Manager Category Display

The default Array Manager console view shows three categories: Arrays, Disks, and Volumes. (NetWare users will see only Arrays.) You can configure this view to show what you want to view and manage. For example, if you are interested primarily in looking at hardware, you can add a hardware category and then select the hardware objects you want to see. You can add more than one kind of object to a category, so a hardware category can contain battery, power supply, and fan objects.

To change a category:
  1. Right-click the computer icon and select Add Categories from the context menu.

  2. Type a category name.

  3. Use Add and Remove to set the categories to appear under the tree view. You can enter a unique Category Name or choose one from the listed items.

  4. Click OK to finish or click Cancel to cancel any changes. You do not have to restart to complete this process.

Customize Headers

This function allows you to choose the headers you want to see and place them in the order in which you would like to see them.

To customize headers:
  1. Highlight an object in the left pane of the console.

  2. In the right pane, right-click in one of the column headings, such as Name.

  3. Select Customize header.

A dialog box comes up with two panes:

Add and Remove buttons are provided to allow you to move the column headers provided by the program between each pane.

  1. Use the Add or Remove buttons to move the column headers you want to the Visible columns and order pane. Once the desired headers are moved to the right pane, you can change their order with the Move Up and Move Down buttons.

Note: You can also change the order of the column headers by dragging a header to the right or the left in the General tab view.

Set Graphical Layout Color Preferences

The color preference option allows you to select how you want to view particular items in the graphical layout, such as RAID-5 volumes, mirrored disks, and other managed objects.

To change colors in the graphical layout:
  1. Right-click on the computer icon and choose Settings.

  2. Select an object to change, such as Primary Partition. This places that item in the text area of the dialog box.

  3. Use the drop-down color menu on the right side to assign a color to that item.

  4. Repeat these steps to change other objects.

  5. Click OK to finish.


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