LAN Network Manager is a Nways Manager-LAN application that provides network management for your LAN environment. LAN Network Manager represents the topology for the resources in your LANs and provides profile, configuration, fault, and performance information for the resources.
LAN Network Manager manages the different types of networks in your LAN environment with a closely-related set of applications, each tailored to a specific network environment or group of resources. These applications communicate with agent programs located in the various networks and report information, such as topology updates or status changes, to LAN Network Manager. The agents also respond to management instructions from LAN Network Manager through the different applications.
The applications that are used by LAN Network Manager extend management function to the following areas:
The LNM OS/2 Agent application extends network management to environments that consist of LLC-based token-ring LANs that are interconnected by certain bridges managed by LAN Network Manager for OS/2 Version 2.0. Using information provided by the OS/2 agent, LAN Network Manager integrates the LAN hardware managed by LNM for OS/2 Version 2.0 into the views of the SNMP managed environment. Although the LLC-based segments are not merged with SNMP segments in the topology views, the flexibility of the graphical interface enables you to manage LLC-based LAN hardware and SNMP-addressable resources.
The LAN Network Manager program uses the IBM OS/2 agent program as its proxy agent in the LLC-based networks. Under the control of LAN Network Manager, the LNM OS/2 Agent application issues instructions to the OS/2 agent program and updates LAN Network Manager based on solicited and unsolicited responses.
LAN Network Manager manages the different networks and resources in your LAN environment by communicating with agent programs. The agent programs report information, such as topology updates or status changes, to LAN Network Manager and also respond to management instructions from LAN Network Manager.
When you start LAN Network Manager, part of the initialization process is the discovery of all configured agent programs in your network. After the agents have been contacted by LAN Network Manager, they can exchange information with LAN Network Manager about the segments and resources that they manage. This exchange of information takes place regardless of whether the NetView for AIX graphical interface is currently running; this ensures that the LAN submaps display up-to-date status and topology for the network environments that they represent when the graphical interface is opened.
You can modify the configuration of each agent program by using SMIT. This enables you to control certain operating parameters and optimize the interaction between the agents and LAN Network Manager. For example, to ensure that LAN Network Manager automatically discovers an agent, you can configure that agent to be discovered at startup. See the section "Methods of Discovery" in the online book Coupling and Autodiscovery for more information.
The LNM for OS/2 Version 2.0 program operates as the token-ring OS/2 agent for LAN Network Manager and extends its management functions to LAN Network Manager. For example, you can query adapters, add and change bridge definitions, and obtain and display performance data. The OS/2 agent communicates with LAN Network Manager through a set of run commands (RUNCMDS) that are built into the LNM for OS/2 Version 2.0 program. The OS/2 agent also converts event notifications that are generated in the token-ring network to SNMP traps and forwards these traps to LAN Network Manager.