Enterprise Management with Control Center

IBM Sterling Control Center portfolio includes two products: IBM Sterling Control Center Monitor and IBM Sterling Control Center Director. It provides centralized management and monitoring of large-scale, distributed IBM® Connect:Direct® server environments. It enables you to enhance operational productivity and improve the quality of service for IBM Connect:Direct file transfers and activities in your environment from one central location through:

Service Level Management

  • Helps answer the questions, “Where is my file?” and “Are my service level agreements being met?” by providing a system-wide view of all your IBM Connect:Direct servers across different platforms and locations in real time
  • Allows you to monitor the overall health of the environment through server status indicators
  • Allows you to setup an early warning system for exceptions regarding critical processing windows and server events in the form of proactive notifications (e-mails, SNMP traps, and GUI alerts)
  • Helps you ensure that your file transfer environment is functioning at the level you need it to by consolidating information for throughput analysis, capacity planning, post-processing operational or security audits, and workload analysis
  • Allows you to release or delete IBM Connect:Direct Processes from a central location

Asset Management

  • Helps answer the questions, “Where is my IBM Connect:Direct software installed and running?” and “Is it in compliance with license agreements?”
  • Helps you track network assets by capitalizing on its server monitoring capabilities. A feature called Guided Node Discovery (also called Node Discovery) lets you find all IBM Connect:Direct servers that a managed IBM Connect:Direct server communicates with.
  • Helps you ensure that your server licenses are up to date and facilitates license distribution to the managed IBM Connect:Direct servers in your environment.

Configuration Management

  • Helps you answer the questions, “Are my IBM Connect:Direct servers configured correctly?” and “Do they comply with our security policy?”
  • Provides a centralized, simplified means of managing the configurations of your Connect:Direct for UNIX, Microsoft Windows, and z/OS® servers by:
    • Providing a common interface for managing and auditing IBM Connect:Direct server configurations
    • Normalizing parameters across platforms that might have different names and value pairs
    • Providing platform-specific syntax checking and easy-access tooltip help
    • Providing a means for updating, viewing, auditing, and tracking versions (including rollback functionality) of configuration data for IBM Connect:Direct servers, such as netmap nodes, functional authorities, and initialization parameters
    • Generating an audit log that identifies all changes that are made to the configuration and who makes them