Remote and distributed administration

SCO OpenServer networking services allow you to administer other systems -- both SCO OpenServer and other types of systems -- from one workstation on your network. Two types of administration are supported: remote and distributed.

Remote administration

Remote administration allows you to manage one system at a time, as if you were root on another system. This concept is familiar to most UNIX system administrators through commands such as rlogin, telnet, and rcmd. Your SCO OpenServer Desktop or Enterprise system extends these abilities by allowing you to view and administer remote systems from your management workstation to perform tasks such as:

• installing and removing software

• administering user and group accounts

• administering local and remote filesystems

• performing system backups

• managing printer queues

Distributed administration

Distributed administration allows you to manage entities (for example, users and printers) that may be associated with several systems in a network rather than being attached to one system. It is particularly important for enterprise installations where large numbers of systems must be maintained in a consistent stated. Examples of distributed administration include:

• Managing the accounts of users and groups who may log into many systems on the network -- using NIS Network Information Service.

• Creating distributed home accounts so users have the same work environment regardless of the system they may log into -- using NIS and automount.

• Sending messages to all machines on the network -- using rwall(NADM).

• Collecting system performance information from all machines on the network and generating failure alerts -- using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and system monitoring technologies.

Both remote and distributed administration can be done with SCOadmin managers, which are graphical administration interfaces supplied with your SCO OpenServer system. For more information on SCOadmin managers, see ``Administering other systems with SCOadmin managers''.