AIX Tip of the Week

AIX Tip of the Week: Service Director: RS/6000 Call Home Support

Audience: AIX System Administrators

Date: April 1999 (Updated: December 2000)

Service Director is an AIX software program that monitors, diagnoses and reports system errors. It can automatically place a service call to IBM without customer intervention. It may be configured to run on a single system, or as part of a client/server network.

Service Director and it's documentation can obtained by anonymous ftp at ftp.software.ibm.com (198.17.57.66). The command line download procedure is listed below. Be sure to set the file transfer mode as "binary" if using this method.

> bin > cd /aix/servdir_client_code > get servdir.installp.Z > get sd6ug.ps.Z or sd6kug.pdf

Although there is no charge for this software, the "call home" function does require the RS/6000 hardware to be on warranty or an IBM maintenance contract.

Update 12/2000

Service Director is being replaced by Service Agent. Documentation and install image can be found at:

ftp://ftp.software.ibm.com/aix/service_agent_code