Tivoli Provisioning Manager Basic Terminology

As TPM gains foothold in Tivoli product space as a successor to ITCM 4.2, it is important to learn some of the basic terminology to understand the upcoming lingo. This article gives you a basic idea for some of the TPM terms. This article credit is shared with Martin Carnegie.

TPM Product Names

Since there are quite a few products under TPM product family, you might want to read some of our earlier blogs about TPM Products. Here are couple of links.

1. http://www.gulfsoft.com/blog_new/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=351
2. http://www.gulfsoft.com/blog_new/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=382

TPM Server

TPM Server is roughly the equivalent of TMR Server in the ITCM 4.2 world. The server initiates all the TPM operations such as scans, software distribution, etc.

Tivoli Common Agent (TCA)

TCA is similar to endpoint in ITCM. However, in TPM, you can perform operations such as basic scans, software installs, etc without the presence of TCA code.

Content Delivery Service (CDS)

Content Delivery Service can be roughly considered as a "Mdist2" like service in TPM that facilitates data transfer across TPM.

CDS Management Server

Content Delivery Service Management server is the server component of Content Delivery Service. It can be thought as a manager of depot servers. (See Below)

Depot Servers

These are equivalent to the gateways in ITCM, from where endpoints pulls the data. Please note however that in TPM, the data transfer can skip depot servers depending upon the SAP mechanism used.

Service Access Point (SAP)

Service Access Point specifies the underlying protocol & authentication information to use while performing TPM operations. For example, TPM can communicate with an endpoint using a SSH service or a Windows SMB service or using a TCA SOA-SAP.

Workflows

These are set of instructions that performs specific task. For example, you can execute a task, copy a file to a remote machine, etc. In TPM, most of the operations such as software distribution, tca installation, Inventory scan are implemented as a set of workflows. Custom workflows can be developed using Jython programming language.

These are some of the basic TPM terms that comes to mind. Hope you find it useful.