IBM Systems Director is an element management system (EMS) (sometimes referred to as a "workgroup management system") first introduced by IBM in 1993 as NetFinity Manager. The software was originally written to run on OS/2 2.0. It has subsequently gone through a number of name changes in the interim. It was changed in 1996 to IBM PC SystemView. Later that same year, it was renamed to TME 10 NetFinity. The following year, it reverted to a slightly altered version of its original name: IBM Netfinity Manager (note the lowercase 'f').
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In 1999, IBM announced Netfinity Director; a new product based on Tivoli IT Director. It was intended as a replacement for IBM Netfinity Manager. When IBM renamed its Netfinity line of enterprise servers to xSeries, the name was changed to IBM Director.
With the release of version 6.1, the product was renamed from IBM Director to IBM Systems Director.
IBM Director consists of 3 components: an agent, a console and a server. To take full advantage of IBM Director's capabilities, the IBM Director Agent must be installed on the monitored system. Inventory and management data are stored in an SQL database (Oracle, SQL Server, IBM DB2 Universal Database or PostgreSQL) which can be separate or on the same server where IBM Director Server resides. Smaller deployments can also utilize Microsoft's Jet or MSDE. The server is configured and managed using the IBM Director Console from any Linux or Microsoft Windows workstation.