Network Installation Management (NIM) integration

BigFix provides an alternative solution for updating and managing multiple AIX system through Network Installation Management (NIM). BigFix supports the NIM patch management features in this release.

You can use NIM from the BigFix console to remotely manage AIX installations and updates in multiple AIX systems in your environment.

For more information about NIM, see the IBM AIX Information Center. The AIX information centers are version-specific. To see the list of available AIX information centers, see the IBM AIX resources at: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/resources.html

The Patches for AIX site provides dashboards that you can use to install, configure, and manage your NIM environment. For more information about these dashboard, see NIM dashboards overview.

Concepts

NIM master
The NIM master provides the resources necessary for the NIM clients to be installed and maintained. These resources can consist of shared product object trees (SPOTs), licensed program product (lpp) sources, bundles of software, or fixes.
The NIM master complies to the following requirements:
  • Only one NIM master can exist in a NIM environment.
  • The NIM master cannot be a NIM client of any other NIM master.
  • The NIM master must be at the same operating system level or higher than all the NIM clients that are assigned to the NIM master.
  • The NIM master can manage thousands of NIM clients at once and run multiple tasks simultaneously on them.
NIM client
The NIM client can be any stand-alone machine in a NIM environment other than the NIM master. NIM clients use the resources from NIM master to do various software maintenance, backup, or other utility functions
NIM clients can belong to only one NIM master.
NIM resource
A collection of files that is used to perform a function on a NIM client. This resource can be any sort of collections of files from a single file in a lone directory to an entire file system. Each resource is given its own name within the NIM environment for easy reference when various NIM tasks are performed.
lpp resource
An lpp_source resource is a directory with a collection of filesets and their corresponding .toc file. In a NIM environment, the initial lpp_source resource must be created from the AIX installation media.
SPOT resource
A Shared Product Object Tree (SPOT) resource is a file system that contains the required files for an AIX machine to operate. It provides network boot and remote installation support.

For more NIM concepts, see the IBM AIX Information Center. The AIX information centers are version-specific. To see the list of available AIX information centers, see the IBM AIX resources at: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/power/software/aix/resources.html