[malmasri]

Currently I'm working in a really HUGE multiple environments shop. Each env. has at least 200 nodes(lpars, standalone), etc. I'm curious to know what other shops use to manage such environemts in terms of mainly deploying new LPARs (builds). We are trying to automate as much as possible for the whole process - A-Z (network IPs assignment, SAN allocation, OS install, 3rd party software install including DB, middleware, etc.).

Please let me know what kind of methods, tools, utilities, etc. you use. I know this is very generic question and might not be feasible to do everything automated. I'm just curious to know what other people use so that I can incorporate in our automation process.

Thanks in advance.

[Mark Taylor]

This is a very generic answer, because you will have your own obstacles to overcome, but NIM and CSM for one would be a good start, Then you have stuff like the Tivoli Deployment tools (IBM Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator - Product overview)

Rgds
Mark Taylor

[ross.mather]

Sorry for the late reply.

Most customers I see use NIM and CSM as they are AIX tools. Some people then integrate that into Tivoli Provisioning manager or other types of tools - but underwater AIX deployment is always NIM related.