Overview

The IBM® z Unified Resource Manager (zManager) is a collection of advanced hardware and virtualization management functions delivered as IBM zSystems firmware. The functions of zManager are implemented as a cooperating set of components hosted on the Hardware Management Console (HMC), the Support Element (SE), and the IBM zSystems CPC. It provides a uniform, integrated administrative model for the heterogeneous computing configuration provided by an IBM zSystems environment. The functions provided by zManager include:

  • Hardware inventory, initialization, configuration, monitoring and problem analysis for the components of an IBM zSystems CPC.
  • Firmware installation and update for the HMC, SE, and traditional CPC components.
  • Operational control and energy management for these hardware elements.

The HMC serves as the administrative access point for zManager. In that capacity, the HMC provides a web-based, remote-able graphical user interface (UI) to make the zManager functions available to users. In addition, it hosts the implementation of zManager Web Service API (Web Services API) that is described in this document.

The Web Services API is a web-oriented programming interface that makes the underlying zManager capabilities available for use by higher level management applications, system automation functions, or custom scripting. The functions that are exposed through the API support several important usage scenarios in virtualization management, including resource inventory, provisioning, monitoring, automation and workload-based optimization among others.