Configuring Servers Using the Central Management Console (CMC)

See the following scenario depicting how to use the Central Management Console and the Central Configuration Manager for server administration.

The CMC is important to administrator as it serve as the central hub for managing and configuring various aspect of the BI platform. CMC is a Web-based tool used to do administrative tasks, including user, content, and server management. It also allows you to publish, organize, and configure security settings. You can do all of these administrative tasks through a web browser on any machine that can connect to the server.

You, as an administrator, can log on to the CMC to change their user preference settings. But only members of the Administrators group can change management settings, unless explicitly granted the permission to do so. Delegated administrators can also be assigned to the CMC to grant some users privileges to do minor administrative tasks.

The Servers Management area of the CMC is your primary tool for server management tasks. It gives a list of servers in your deployment. For most management and configuration tasks, you need to select a server in the list and choose a command from the Manage or Action menu.

The Navigation Tree

The navigation tree on the left side of the Servers Management area gives a number of ways to view the Servers list. Select items in the navigation tree to display the servers in the Detail pane.

Click on the following link for more information about Working with the Servers management area in the CMC.

Working with the Servers management area in the CMC

When you disable a server in the server in the BI platform, you prevent it from receiving and responding to new report requests. But, you don't actually stop the server process. The benefit of disabling is that you allow the server to fulfill any running report requests that are in its queue.

A node is a group of BI platform servers that run on the same host. Servers on a node run under the same user account. One machine can have many nodes, so you can run processes under different user accounts.

One Server Intelligence Agent (SIA) manages and monitors servers on a node. The SIA starts and stops the servers as requested by the CMC.

The following steps explain the interaction of platform components when the SIA is started.

1. You start the SIA manually in the Central Configuration Manger (CCM).
   Note

   A SIA can be configured to start automatically with the operating system, or it can be started manually with the CCM.
2. If the SIA is configured to start a CMS, and the CMS isn’t running, the SIA starts the CMS and connects. The CMS then confirms the SIA identity to make sure that it's valid.
3. Once the SIA has successfully connected to a CMS, it asks a list of servers to manage.
4. The CMS asks the CMS system database for a list of servers managed by the SIA.
5. The CMS returns the list of servers to manage, and their configuration, to the SIA.
6. For each server configured to start automatically, the SIA starts it with the proper configuration and monitors its state.

You can run several server instances on the same BI platform server on the same machine by adding a new server.

Select the following link for more details on adding a server.

Adding a server | SAP Help Portal

Cloning an existing server gives you the option to create a new server to expand your deployment. The clone server contains the configuration settings of the original server. Click on the following link for more details on to clone a server.

You can run several servers of the same BI platform server on the same machine.

The following link shows steps to clone a server.

To clone a server

You can change server settings through the Central Management Console in two ways:

• On the Properties screen for the server
• On the Edit Common Services screen for the server

When you use a configuration template, any new server or existing server using the template of that type will have the identical settings.

Click on the following links to view details on setting and applying a configuration template.

To set a configuration template

To apply a configuration template to a server