AIX Version 4.3 Differences Guide

Chapter 6. System Management and Utilities
Web-Based System Manager is an AIX system administration tool for
administering an AIX host locally or over the Internet. Web-Based System
Manager is the next step in the evolution of AIX system administration tools. This
evolution has included System Management Interface tool (SMIT), Motif SMIT,
Distributed SMIT, and Visual System Manager (VSM). SMIT and VSM have been
major contributors to customer satisfaction regarding AIX system management
and usability. It is an objective for Web-Based System Manager to encompass the
system administration capabilities and surpass the usability of these
predecessors.
The objectives of Web-Based System Manager are:
• Simplification of AIX administration by a single new interface.
• Enable AIX systems to be administered from almost any client platform.
• Enable AIX systems to be administered remotely.
• Provide an administrative environment that exploits the similarities of the
Windows 95/NT and AIX CDE desktop environments so that users of the
system will find a large degree of look and feel consistency between
Web-Based System Manager and these two primary desktop environments.
Web-Based System Manager provides a comprehensive system management
environment and covers most of the tasks in the SMIT user interface.
Note: SMIT continues to fulfill the need for system administration from an ASCII
terminal.
6.1 Overview of Existing AIX Systems Management
Since the introduction of AIX Version 3.1 there have been a number of system
management tools available to help system administrators manage their
installations. These include SMIT, DSMIT, and VSM.
6.1.1 SMIT Overview
SMIT was introduced in AIX Version 3.1. It provides a menu-driven interface for
approximately 160 local system management tasks. In SMIT, the user is guided
by a series of interactive menus and dialogs that automatically build, execute,
and log commands required to accomplish selected operations. SMIT eliminates
the need to know, or learn, command-level syntax for system management tasks.
SMIT is easily extendable, and many LPPs and customers have added their own
SMIT menus and dialogs.
Figure 11 shows the default SMIT menu, as seen on an X-based display.
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