Resource Inventory Model

Overview

The SAS Environment resource inventory model contains three levels:
platform
A container such as an operating system or a SAS server tier that holds servers and services
server
Software product or process, such as a SAS Metadata Server, that runs on a platform
service
A task-specific software component, such as a SAS logical server, that runs on a server or platform

Platforms

Platforms are the highest level of resource type in SAS Environment Manager. They are containers that host other software and services. There are three major categories of platforms:
  • operating system platforms
  • SAS Application Server Tier
  • virtual and network platforms
An operating system platform consists of a computer (physical or virtual) and the operating system that runs on it. SAS Environment Manager uses the system plugin to teach the agent how to auto-discover the operating system platform. You cannot manually add an operating system platform to inventory. SAS Environment Manager supports most of the operating systems on which SAS is supported.
The SAS Application Server Tier platform is an instantiation of a SAS deployment and a collective store of deployment-wide information such as license information and clustering. Resources in the SAS Application Server Tier platform include SAS Metadata Server and SAS Application Server and their logical servers (such as SAS Workspace Servers, SAS OLAP Servers, and SAS Stored Process Servers). The agent automatically discovers and creates the SAS Application Server through direct communication with the SAS metadata server as a platform resource.
Virtual and network platforms include a variety of platform types that do not map to an individual physical machine running a traditional operating system and are managed by an agent proxy. These include the following:
  • resources that an agent monitors remotely over the network, such as network hosts and devices
  • virtual resources such as VMware vSphere hosts and virtual machines
  • distributed sets of resources, such as GemFire Distributed Systems
The agent does not automatically discover platforms other than the host operating system and the SAS Application Server Tier. You must manually create other platforms or supply resource properties data that enable the agent to manage them. Below are the virtual and network platform types that SAS Environment Manager supports:
  • Cisco IOS
  • GemFire Distributed System
  • Network Device
  • Network Host
  • VMware vSphere Host
  • VMware vSphere VM

Servers

In SAS Environment Manager, a server is commonly a software product or process that runs on a platform. Servers provide a communication interface and perform specific tasks upon request. The Monitoring Defaults page on the Manage tab lists all of the server types (along with platform and service types) that SAS Environment Manager supports.
Most server types are auto-discovered by a server type-specific SAS Environment Manager plugin. If the plugin that manages a server does not support auto-discovery, or if auto-discovery of a server fails, you might need to manually create a server. See Manually Adding a Server.
Examples of server types include the following:
  • SAS Metadata Server
  • SAS Object Spawner
  • Postgres server
  • SAS Home Directory Service

Services

In SAS Environment Manager, a service is a software component dedicated to a particular task that runs on a server or platform. A service that runs on a server is a service, and a service that runs on a platform is a platform service.
The resource plugin that discovers a platform or server also discovers key services, such as CPUs, network interfaces, and file systems that are running on the platform.
You can also configure a platform service that serves as a proxy for a resource that the SAS Environment Manager agent can monitor over the network. Examples include
  • DNS service
  • POP3 service
  • Fileserver mount
  • Windows service
  • Network host storage
For more information, see Manually Configuring a Service.
Services that run on a server can be either an internal component of the server or a deployed item. Logical SAS servers are considered to be services that run on SAS server resources. Examples of services that run on servers include the following:
  • PostgreSQL database
  • SAS Object Spawner
  • SAS Logical Workspace Server
  • SpringSource tc Runtime Cache
The Monitoring Defaults page on the Manage tab lists the supported platform service types (along with platform types and server types) provided by the installed plugins.