ITM 6.2.1: What is new in Agent Deployment

If you have been using the "tacmd createnode" to deploy agents in the past, you are in for a pleasant surprise in ITM 6.2.1!  IBM added few welcome changes to the above command.  These new features not only makes the deployment easier, they enable you keep track of agent deployment like you'd do in sophisticated products like ITCM.   This article discusses the new features in detail.

Background Execution

If you invoke the tacmd createnode with the usual parameters (remote system name, user and password), it will NOT hang until the agent deployed as it was before. Instead, it will give you a transaction ID and return back control. Kinda similar to "winstsp" command in ITCM. Are you already seeing some ITCM like behavior? Wait there is more! To get the status of the deployment, use the new tacmd subcommand, "tacmd getdeploystatus".  It lists all the distributions you have done so far and their status. A sample output is shown below. 

Transaction ID : 12292212812729130001281138021

Command        : INSTALL

Status         : SUCCESS

Retries        : 0

TEMS Name      : VSITM621WIN

Target Hostname: 192.168.162.169

Platform       : WINNT

Product        : NT

Version        : 062100000

Error Message  : KDY2065I: The node creation operation was a success.

Batch Deployment

ITM 6.2.1 "tacmd createnode" supports batch deployment of agents. For example, you can create a deployment group named AppServers, add all appservers to that group and send deployment to them using single tacmd createnode command.  There are new additions to subcommands viz. tacmd creategroup, tacmd addgroupmember and tacmd deletegroupmember to manage groups and its members. 

Workspaces

To keep track of all your agent deployments, ITM 6.2.1 adds new workspaces to TEPS at the Enterprise level.  The workspace provides a summary of all your deployments including number of agents Succeeded, Failed, Progress, etc, similar to MDist2 Console. There is also another workspace called "Deployment Status Summary By Transaction" providing status of deployments by Transaction ID.  A sample Workspace view is shown below.

 

Remote Execution

One other subtle difference documented is that you can execute "tacmd createnode" from anywhere and you don't have to be logged on to TEMS server.   

These feature additions are steps in the right direction for managing agent deployment and I hope you will find the features helpful.