ClearCube Grid Center Admin Guide 4.11 - Manual (Page 8)

2 • Introduction Grid Center 4.11 Administrator’s Guide
Management Capabilities in Grid Center
Grid Center provides several unique management capabilities in the following six
View windows:
• Configuration View
• Edit Groups View
• Switching View
• Allocation View
• Updates View
• Inventory and Health View
Each View provides access to specialized tools for configuring and managing an
I/Port environment, along with convenient links to the other Views.
Configuration View
The Configuration View provides the fundamentals for configuring a network built
around an I/Port environment.
Edit Groups View
Grid Center applies the concept of groups to I/Ports and Blades. Quite simply, a group is
a collection of zero or more I/Ports or Blades that has been created by an administrator.
A group can be left empty, to be populated later. A group can contain a single I/Port or
Blade, to allow dedicated mappings between I/Ports and Blades. A group can contain
several I/Ports or Blades, to allow shared mappings between I/Ports or Blades. With
Grid Center, groups can be set up without limitation on size or location. This capability
gives a wide range of options to system administrators for load-balancing and resource
sharing, and can be dynamically adjusted to meet changing resource demands. The Edit
Groups View allows creating and configuring groups.
Switching View
With the Switching View, Grid Center delivers server-level availability to end users by
allowing administrators to easily switch I/Ports to spare Blades if a problem occurs.
This dramatically reduces downtime because the end user does not need to wait for
deskside support. The end user resumes working on a spare Blade while an IT
technician troubleshoots the problem Blade.
Allocation View
Allocation is the assigning of resources to users based on their computing needs. In
any user environment, some people need only a little access or processing power,
and some people are “power users” who need a dedicated processor—or several