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As an Administrator, we need to gather as much information about the network as possible. And our network may be spread over a large area. So a tool that would allow us to collect information such as what Operating Systems computers are using, and what version of the Operating System we are using, maybe how much hard disk space is left available on computers - those types of information can be collected by SNMP: "Simple Network Management Protocol". SNMP uses agents to monitor devices in the network, and these agents collect the information that the management system directs them to collect. And we will discuss SNMP later on in this training in greater depth, but suffice it to say for now that an Administrator can use this protocol to gather information about the network. We can also use other software that then uses this protocol, but provides us with a graphical user interface making the SNMP protocol easier to use, otherwise we need to understand the intricacies of SNMP. There are other software protocols that also allow us to manage the network. Some of these include DMI and SAF-TE. These aren't really protocols per se, although there are certain rules and regulations as to how to use them, but actually they are techniques or they are programs that allow us to collect information from the network. DMI (Desktop Management Interface) works as a totally separate Operating System to gather information about an Operating System without tainting the information of the Operating System itself. In other words if an Operating System is being used to gather information about itself, then the information will not be exactly accurate, because that information would also include the gathering process. For example, if we are gathering information about how hard the processors are working, well what about the processors that are working and gathering the information itself. So Desktop Management Interface works as a totally separate Operating System so that our information is more accurate. SCSI Accessed Fault Tolerant Enclosures (SAF-TE) monitors disk activity and the activity of other devices that are part of a SCSI chain. So SAF-TE is used in many Servers, because that's where SCSI chains usually exist, as in servers and outside of servers connected to the Server. And SAF-TE allows us to monitor the disk activity and to determine the input/output performance of a disk and how we might tweak the system to use our resources perhaps more efficiently. Because as we said in the beginning of talking about network components, one of the goals of the Administrator is to set up a network that runs efficiently. In order to do this we, need to understand all of the components and then we also need to understand how to do the installation itself. How to install the hardware, and how to install the software. And we will talk about installation in our next chapter.