Tips for designing the hub and spoke server configuration

In designing the hub and spoke configuration, especially consider the resource requirements for status monitoring. Also, consider how you want to group hub and spoke servers and whether you want to use multiple hub servers.

Use the Operations Center System Requirements Calculator to estimate the system requirements for running the Operations Center and the hub and spoke servers that are monitored by the Operations Center.

Primary factors that affect performance

The following factors have the most significant impact on the performance of the Operations Center:

The processor and memory on the computer where the Operations Center is installed
The system resources of the hub and spoke servers, including the disk system that is in use for the hub server database
The number of client nodes and virtual machine file spaces that are managed by the hub and spoke servers
The frequency at which data is refreshed in the Operations Center

How to group hub and spoke servers

Consider grouping hub and spoke servers by geographic location. For example, managing the servers within the same data center can help prevent issues that are caused by firewalls or by inadequate network bandwidth between different locations. If necessary, you can further divide servers according to one or more of the following characteristics:

The administrator who manages the servers
The organizational entity that funds the servers
Server operating system
The language in which the servers run
Tip: If the hub and spoke servers are not running in the same language, you might see corrupted text in the Operations Center.

How to group hub and spoke servers in an enterprise configuration

In an enterprise configuration, a network of IBM Spectrum Protect™ servers are managed as a group. Changes that are made on the configuration manager can be distributed automatically to one or more managed servers in the network.

The Operations Center normally registers and maintains a dedicated administrator ID on the hub and spoke servers. This monitoring administrator must always have the same password on all the servers.

If you use an enterprise configuration, you can improve the process by which the administrator credentials are synchronized on spoke servers. To improve the performance and efficiency of maintaining the monitoring administrator ID, complete the following steps:

Designate the configuration manager server as the Operations Center hub server. During the hub server configuration, a monitoring administrator ID named IBM-OC-hub_server_name is registered.
On the hub server, add the monitoring administrator ID to a new or existing enterprise configuration profile. Issue the NOTIFY SUBSCRIBERS command to distribute the profile to the managed servers.
Add one or more of the managed servers as Operations Center spoke servers.

The Operations Center detects this configuration and allows the configuration manager to distribute and update the monitoring administrator ID on the spoke servers.

When to use multiple hub servers

If you have more than 10 - 20 V6.3.4 spoke servers, or if resource limitations require the environment to be partitioned, you can configure multiple hub servers, and connect a subset of the spoke servers to each hub server.

Restrictions:

A single server cannot be both a hub server and a spoke server.
Each spoke server can be assigned to only one hub server.
Each hub server requires a separate instance of the Operations Center, each of which has a separate web address.