Tivoli Provisioning Manager V5.1 - Product Overview

Tivoli Provisioning Manager (TPM) V5.1 is the next generation of Provisioning product from IBM. TPM V5.1 combines the provisioning features of TPM V3.x with the robust software delivery capabilities of IBM Tivoli Configuration Manager (ITCM) 4.x into a single product. Unlike the good old ITCM 4.2, TPM is not just one product. There are several products appearing under TPM product family and this article gives a basic overview of these products.

Disclaimer: Much of this information mentioned here are based on what we heard from various sources. The overall purpose of the article is to clear the confusion about the different TPM products. For licensing, it is always better to check with your IBM representative.

To be honest, TPM product naming convention is somewhat confusing and it took us a while to understand the product mapping. Some of the products available under TPM product family are,

1) Tivoli Provisioning Manager
2) Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator
3) Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Software
4) Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Operating System Deployment.
5) Tivoli Provisioning Manager Express products

Let us start looking at each one of these products starting from least feature rich product and going all the way up.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Operating System Deployment V5.1

Anyone remember the Pristine Manager component of ITCM 4.x? If you recall, it is used for deploying operating systems on bare hardware. If you are looking ONLY for OS deployment capabilities and you don't need other Software Distribution features, then TPM for OS is the best bet for you. For those who follow IBM acquistions, TPM for OS is based on Rembo Auto- Deploy 4.0.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Software V5.1

Tivoli Provisioning Manager for Software (TPM for SD) is the direct replacement of your ITCM V4.x and it provides Software Distribution, Inventory and patch management capabilities. As mentioned earlier, Pristine Manager function of ITCM 4.x is no longer available in TPM for Software. Instead, TPM for Software contains TPM for OS deployment functionality though you will need to purchase separate license for OS deployment. If you would like all the TPM licenses to be bundled into one product, you might want to buy the full version of Tivoli Provisioning Manager or Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator. TPM for Software V5.1 is expected to be available by the first quarter of 2007.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager V5.1

Tivoli Provisioning Manager V5.1 combines the features of TPM for OS Deployment and TPM for Software into one package. In addition, it also prvides some advanced automation features such as Jython based workflow automation.

Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator V5.1

Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator includes all the functionality of TPM V5.1. In addition, TIO gives much finer control over resource allocation, pooling and scheduling.

Tivoli Provisioning Manager Express Products

In line with IBM Express products, TPM Express products are tuned toward small and medium businesses. Unlike TPM for Software which combines Software Distribution and Inventory into one product, TPM Express provides separate packages for Inventory and Software Distribution. And, from what we heard, there is no direct migration path available from Express products to the "mainstream" TPM product.

Credits

The article credit should be shared with Martin Carnegie. Many thanks to him for the help in gathering information about TPM.

I hope the article helps to clear some of the confusion about the TPM family of products. Interested in learning TPM along with us? Stay tuned for our future blog articles on TPM. Are you planning to upgrade from ITCM to TPM anytime soon? Please feel free to talk back.