The Tivoli® Enterprise
Portal client, also known as the portal client, is a Java-based user
interface that connects to the portal server to view all monitoring
data collections. The portal client is the user interaction component
of the presentation layer.
The portal client brings all of these views together in a single
window so you can see when any component is not working as expected.
The client offers three modes of operation, that all work with Java™:
- Browser client
- Desktop client
- Java Web Start client
See
Table 1 for
more information.
The browser client is automatically installed with the Tivoli
Enterprise Portal Server (on the Web server that is integrated
with the portal server). The desktop client is supported on Windows and Linux operating systems. You can install the
desktop client from the IBM® Tivoli Monitoring installation
media or you can use IBM Web
Start for Java to download the
desktop client from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server.
To find out what browsers are supported see Supported browser versions.
Using browser mode or Web Start clients allow you to perform maintenance
updates in a single location. If the desktop client is installed from
installation media, maintenance must be installed on each computer.
If Web Start for Java is used
to download and run the desktop client, you gain the performance advantage
of the desktop client along with the convenience of centralized administration
from the server. Additional performance gains can be made by modifying
the Java heap settings. (For
more details on the heap settings see
Locating and sizing the portal client.) Unless you want
a very secure environment where there are no downloads, use IBM Web Start for Java for obtaining the desktop client.
Note: To
use Java Web Start to download
the desktop client from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server,
either Java, version 6.0 or
7.0 (also referred to as JRE version 1.6 or 1.7) must be installed
on the system to which you are downloading the client. You can use
either the IBM Runtime Environment
for Java and the Oracle Java Runtime Environment. The IBM Runtime Environment for Java can be downloaded from the Tivoli Enterprise Portal Server
to the system where you are downloading the client. For more details,
see
Using Web Start to download and run the desktop client.
Many customers install the desktop client on Citrix for the following
reasons. Citrix allows for better GUI performance for users at remote
locations. In addition, some users do not allow the Tivoli Enterprise Portal client's prerequisite Java version to be installed on
desktop computers. By using Citrix, users do not have to install Java on the user's desktop systems.