Defining the Working Collective

The working collective specifies the current list of clients that receive commands built by the Distributed System Management Interface Tool (DSMIT) program. The working collective is a temporary list of clients and must be respecified with each new DSMIT session. By default, the server is the only machine in the working collective when you start DSMIT.

Prerequisite Conditions

1. A DSMIT server must reside on your system.
2. DSMIT clients must be installed on the remote hosts.
3. The DSMIT client installation packages must be installed on your server.
4. A domain must already be created when defining the working collective from a domain.

Define the Working Collective Using the Command Line

Enter the dsmit command with the -W or -w flag. For example, to define the working collective that contains the floor_1 domain and clients M1 and M2, enter the following:

dsmit -W floor_1 -w M1,M2

Note: Do not put spaces between client names.

The -W flag specifies the names of domains to include in the working collective. The -w flag specifies the names of clients to include in the working collective.

Define the Working Collective Using the DSMIT ASCII Interface

1. Enter the dsmit command. A menu appears with the System Management and Domain Management options.
2. Select the Domain Management option to enter the Domain Management menu. If you select the System Management option, the System Management Interface Tool appears.
3. Select the Manage Working Collective of Machines option to enter the Working Collective of Machines menu.
4. Select the Add Working Collective Members option to add clients to the collective of working machines.

   Note: When defining a working collective for non-AIX systems, you must select the Redefine Working Collective Members option rather than the Add Working Collective Members option. Once the new operating system is defined with the list specified in the Redefine Working Collective Members menu, you can add or remove members with that operating system.

5. Once you have created a list of clients, return to the first menu containing the System Management and Domain Management options. From this menu, you can access the rest of the menus.

   The Manage Working Collective of Machines menu has the following options in addition to the Add Working Collective Members option:

   Show Working Collective Member	Displays the member list of the working collective.
   Show Responding Status of Working Collective Members
   	Displays the inclusion or exclusion status of clients and whether they responded to the last command.
   Remove Working Collective Members	Removes a member of the working collective.
   Redefine Working Collective Members
   	Removes all members of the present working collective and adds members based on new menu selection criteria.
   Exclude Working Collective Members	Excludes members from the working collective, preventing commands from being sent to the excluded member.
   Include Working Collective Members	Restores excluded members so they can receive commands.
   Save Working Collective as Domain	Saves the current working collective to a domain that can be reused.

Define the Working Collective Using the DSMIT Graphical Interface

1. Enter the dsmit command. A Visual System Management (VSM) application appears with machine and domain objects.
2. Select the machine or domain objects you want to include in the working collective.
3. To perform system management tasks on the machines in the working collective, double click on the DSMIT icon in the Action area or drag the selected objects and drop them on the DSMIT icon in the action area. The system management menus will appear.

Related Information

Distributed System Management Interface Tool (DSMIT) Overview.

Saving the Current Working Collective as a Domain.