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The Web-based System Manager NIM application lets you administer a Network Installation Management (NIM) environment. NIM enables you to centrally install and manage software on client standalone machines, and to initialize resources for client diskless and dataless machines.
The NIM environment consists of two basic machine roles: master and client. The NIM master provides the central point of administration for the NIM environment and is its primary resource server. All other machines are clients to the master, including machines that may also serve resources.
Three types of client machines can be managed in the NIM environment: standalone, diskless, and dataless.
A standalone machine can boot (start up) and run from its own resources, independent of network servers. Standalone machines are managed in NIM networks primarily to install and update software.
Diskless and dataless clients are not capable of booting and running without help from servers on a network. Diskless machines have no hard disk and must mount all file systems from remote servers. Dataless machines have local hard disks that include paging space, and the /tmp and /home file systems, but no boot image. In order for diskless and dataless clients to successfully boot and configure, the machines must be added to the NIM environment and resources must be initialized.
All operations on clients in the NIM environment require creation of one or more resources. Resources are defined files and directories that are used to perform a specific operation. For example, an lpp_source resource is a directory of installable images. A SPOT resource provides network boot and installation support. A home resource provides a parent directory for client /home directories.
The master machine, client machines, resources, and the networks through which the machines communicate are all represented by objects in NIM. Each object has a unique name, specifed when the object is defined.
These are among the tasks you can perform using NIM:
You must be a root user to perform any function in Web-based System Manager NIM.
Click a task from the NIM Tasks list for instructions on how to perform that task.