Chapter 6. IBM System Management Tools
Regularly scheduled system backups (attended or unattended).
Continuous or periodic backups (mirroring) of critical data files.
Emergency system backups when a S.M.A.R.T. Predictive Failure alert is issued.
SMART Reaction builds upon and complements the full range of systems management features found in
IBM commercial PCs, including Wake on LAN, LANClient Control Manager (LCCM), DMI BIOS,
Instrumentation Code and S.M.A.R.T. hard disk drives.
The SMART Reaction application consists of two components:
1. The SMART Reaction Manager, which resides on a Windows NT 4.0 system (either a server or a
workstation), and
2. The SMART Reaction Client, which resides on the client system and supports either Windows 95 or
Windows NT 4.0 Workstation.
In the SMART Reaction environment, S.M.A.R.T. technologies included in each client hard disk drive
monitor the disk periodically using a technique known as Predictive Failure Analysis (PFA). If the hard
disk drive begins to experience a high number of retries when reading or writing data, a S.M.A.R.T. Alert
is passed to the DMI Instrumentation Code running on the client system. This alert is then passed to the
SMART Reaction Client application, which will automatically respond to the potential failure based on
administrator-defined policies.
How SMART Reaction Responds to a Potential Problem
Once SMART Reaction on the client system receives a S.M.A.R.T. alert, it can respond in several ways as
defined by the network administrator:
1. Notification
The first response is to notify the user and/or selected support personnel and administrators that there
is a potential problem with the client system hard disk drive. The user can be notified with a pop-up
message that can be customized to include information such as detailed instructions, telephone
numbers, etc. SMART Reaction can also send an e-mail notification of the problem to appropriate
persons at local or remote addresses. Finally, SMART Reaction can also be programmed to issue a
pager notification if the server has telephony support.
2. Data backup with legacy tools
To help protect your critical data, the SMART Reaction Manager can automatically begin a backup
process using your network's legacy backup software. SMART Reaction is compatible with many of
the industry-leading backup programs from manufacturers such as Seagate, Cheyenne, ADSM, etc.)
This capability helps ensure that IBM PCs that support SMART Reaction technology can be integrated
seamlessly into your existing network. SMART Reaction will simply pass the backup command to
your backup software for processing via your normal procedures.
3. Backup with SMART Reaction
SMART Reaction also includes its own set of robust backup capabilities that enable it to protect your
data without relying on other backup software. A DMI alert passed to the SMART Reaction Manager
includes information such as drive size, partitioning, file format and current capacity. This enables
SMART Reaction Manager to allocate the necessary space on the administrator-defined backup file
server. Once the space is allocated, SMART Reaction Client transfers all of the data on the client hard
disk to the server.
4. Continuous data mirroring
Aside from the initial S.M.A.R.T. alert notification, SMART Reaction can be configured such that the
user does not need to take any action to continue working and remain productive. That's because
SMART Reaction will automatically copy any new data they save to the selected file server. In
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Technical Information Manual
