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Accessing UNIX and Linux Computers in Operations Manager

 

Updated: May 13, 2016

Applies To: System Center 2012 R2 Operations Manager, System Center 2012 - Operations Manager, System Center 2012 SP1 - Operations Manager

In System Center 2012 – Operations Manager, the management server uses two protocols to communicate with the UNIX or Linux computer:

  • Secure Shell (SSH) and Secure Shell File Transfer Protocol (SFTP)

    Used for installing, upgrading, and removing agents.

  • Web Services for Management (WS-Management)

    Used for all monitoring operations and include the discovery of agents that were already installed.

The protocol that is used depends on the action or information that is requested on the management server. All actions, such as agent maintenance, monitors, rules, tasks, and recoveries, are configured to use predefined profiles according to their requirement for an unprivileged or privileged account.

Note

All credentials referred to in this topic pertain to accounts that have been established on the UNIX or Linux computer, not to the Operations Manager accounts that are configured during the installation of Operations Manager. Contact your system administrator for credentials and authentication information.

For detailed instructions for specifying credentials and configuring accounts, see How to Set Credentials for Accessing UNIX and Linux Computers.

Authentication on the UNIX or Linux Computer

In Operations Manager, the system administrator is no longer is required to provide the root password of the UNIX or Linux computer to the management server. Now by elevation, an unprivileged account can assume the identity of a privileged account on the UNIX or Linux computer. The elevation process is performed by the UNIX su (superuser) and sudo programs that use the credentials that the management server supplies. For privileged agent maintenance operations that use SSH (such as discovery, deployment, upgrades, uninstallation, and agent recovery), support for su, sudo elevation, and support for SSH key authentication (with or without passphrase) is provided. For privileged WS-Management operations (such as viewing secure log files), support for sudo elevation (without password) is added.

Accessing UNIX and Linux Computers Topics