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SPAM (Systematic Program for Analytics and Monitoring) is an IBM ServerProven application used for operating system compliance. SPAM was built specifically for UNIX to collect and store all operating system level attributes. SPAM is made up of the following modules: Changes, Comparisons (using Server-2-Server comparison technology), and Extraction. SPAM considers that all OS level attributes fall into one of the following categories: | volume groups | logical volumes | | physical volumes | paging space | | file systems | NFS | | packages | system files | | devices | network | | print queues | tunables | | system attributes | users | | NIM | groups | | processes | RSCT |
Based on these logical groups, SPAM is able to execute tasks against the collected data that may be otherwise difficult. Some of the functions available through the application are comparisons between operating systems, and extraction of attributes from operating systems. Changes are stored per host based on the above logical groups. Each change is recorded, and available for historical reporting. Changes that occur within a single OS image are tracked, and comparable. Easy to read colored output provides a simple, but sophisticated view into individual changes. Comparisons are based on an OS-to-OS data compare, that reports all differences. Included with the application are some obvious exclusions that will always register as differences (such as serial numbers, etc.), but exclusions can also be included at runtime. The comparison output provides a comprehensive report of differences as they relate to the logical groups listed above. Extractions are based on a complete data parse relevant to the logical groups above. Strings, or regular expression is used to extract keys, or values from the stored OS attributes. The application includes some commonly used regular expressions (such as firmware, network media speed, etc.), but expressions can be customized at runtime. The extraction output provides a consistently comprehensive report of the requested data. Some additional functionality planned for SPAM: expand the 1-to-1 limitation of the comparison, and execute a compliance reconcilation that would apply a configuration back to a system if desired. Sincall Technologies is an IBM Business Partner focused on founding software upon leading edge technology. Currently SPAM runs on, and is Server Proven for, AIX. 
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