Overview of Management & Control Services

Attachmate Management & Control Services (MCS) is a Web-based server console that allows you to centrally manage and configure compatible Attachmate products. The primary purposes of MCS are to provide:

• A common interface for creating and storing configurations for compatible Attachmate products.

• A central runtime facility for client applications that need to access and use those configurations.

• Management tools for monitoring and reporting how compatible products are being used.

Many of the features provided by MCS were previously available in separate Attachmate product releases. MCS combines those features into a single application management framework, extending those features across multiple products.

Since MCS is accessed using a Web browser, you can run the MCS console from the same machine on which MCS is installed, or remotely via an intranet or Internet connection.

MCS Features

Following is a list of the product management and control features that MCS provides:

• MCS Internal Security

  MCS provides the following security devices for determining who can access and use the MCS console:

  • Authentication—Allows you to specify the level of user authentication required to access the MCS console and write configurations to MCS. In addition, you can specify whether or not users can save their user name and password locally in a cookie (so that they don't need to log in each time they access MCS) and whether or not they are required to access MCS through a secure port.

  • Permissions—Allows you to specify which of the users and or groups that are members of the directory listing can access and use the MCS console.

  • Directory Services—Allows you to manage MCS users and groups using the internal MCS Directory service, or incorporate a user and group list maintained in an external directory service (LDAP, NIS, or NTDS). LDAP support currently allows the use of Active Directory for Windows 2000, Netscape Directory 4.0, Novell Directory, and IBM OS/390 LDAP Server (via RACF).

• Security Services

  Security Services provides Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) 3.0 and Transport Layer Security (TLS) 1.0 support for MCS. This includes authenticated and encrypted sessions between the server and clients, including MCS, which you can use to configure and monitor MCS and its clients.

• Licensing and Metering

  MCS provides a licensing and metering feature that reports current and historical usage of client applications, including summary statistics on maximum usage. MCS calculates usage by tracking the consumption of client licenses.

• Server and Cluster Management

  MCS provides a number of server management features that allow you to access and configure servers and server clusters on which one or more MCS-compatible products are installed. You can view summary information about a server or cluster, view detailed information about a specific server, control which server is the primary server in a cluster, manage server clusters, and remotely configure the directory service and security settings for managed servers.

• Event Logging and Viewing

  MCS provides an event logging service that allows you to collect and store events generated by MCS itself, as well as events generated by MCS-managed products. Event logging is always enabled for both MCS and MCS-managed products.

  You can view stored event logs using MCS, and sort the event list on any field. You can also manage event logs by specifying which events you want to record, how many event log files to maintain, and the maximum disk space allowed for storing event log files.

• Trace Logging and Viewing

  MCS provides a trace logging service that allows you to trace and store events generated by MCS itself, as well as events generated by MCS-managed products. Tracing can be enabled as needed for MCS and for MCS-managed products.

  You can view stored trace files using MCS, and sort the event list on any field. You can also manage trace logs by specifying which events you want to record, how many trace log files to maintain, and the maximum disk space allowed for storing trace log files.

• ID Manager

  MCS provides the ID Manager function to manage and distribute host access IDs for users of client applications. ID Manager provides IDs to client applications (such as viewers and printer applets, or custom applications that work with Smart Connectors) at runtime.

  Using ID Manager allows the unique connection data for each client to be omitted from the viewer, printer applet, or Smart Connector configuration. Therefore, you can create a single configuration that can be used by multiple clients to establish multiple sessions with a host, rather than having to create a separate configuration for each host connection.

	Overview of the MCS Console
	Using MCS for the First Time