HP TopTools - Manual (Page 8)

toptools user guide
Toptools provides specific management to the following HP products:
• HP Vectra and Brio Desktops
• HP Kayak and Visualize Workstations
• HP Omnibook Notebooks
• HP Netservers
• HP Blade Servers
• HP Power Bar cabinets
• HP Procurve and Advancestack networking devices
• HP LaserJet and JetDirect products
• HP Jornada PC Companions
• HP SureStore products
• HP Network Attached Storage (NAS) products
• HP-UX systems
Architecture
Toptools collects and then stores information about your network into an ODBC compliant database (MEDS) on a
web server. Toptools uses the web server to authenticate and present the information to Toptools consoles. The
Toptools console, which presents the data to the user (network administrator), can be launched from any station on
your network running a web browser supported by the Toptools application.
The web browser (Toptools console) and the web server use the HTTP protocol, a standard used by the Internet that
provides extensible mechanisms to authenticate a user and offers various encryption options to secure the
communication. The use of a single protocol from the console to the management server simplifies remote
connections through firewalls and minimizes security risks.
Toptools Configuration
Toptools communicates with managed devices using industry standard protocols: TCP/IP, IPX/SPX, DMI, WMI,
SNMP, and HTTP. The protocols used to discover, inventory and manage each device will depend on which
protocols the managed device supports. For example, Toptools will typically use IP, SNMP, and HTTP to
communicate with a Procurve switch, IPX and SNMP to manage a Netserver running Novell NetWare, and IP and
WMI to manage a new Windows 2000 HP Kayak workstation. The Toptools discovery process, one of the several
processes that are part of the Toptools application, automatically detects which protocols are supported and saves
that information to the database.
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