In a typical configuration of the Global Manager, there are two types of information sources: the Adapter Platform, which handles information from third-party applications, and the underlying VMware Smart Assurance Domain Managers. After the Global Manager processes the information, it forwards the results to end users through clients such as the Global Console or an adapter that sends information to third-party applications.

Flow of event information in a basic Global Manager configuration is an example of a basic Global Manager configuration. The lines show how information enters through either an IP Availability Manager (or other underlying Domain Managers) or an Adapter Platform, is passed to a Global Manager, and finally is passed to an end user or application. Note that the figure does not show the connection that transports topological information between the IP Availability Manager and the Adapter Platform.

Figure 1. Flow of event information in a basic Global Manager configuration

The Adapter Platform imports topology and event information from third-party applications and prepares it for use by the Global Manager; data from third-party applications should not be sent directly to the Global Manager. The Adapter Platform creates notifications from the incoming information and can even associate these notifications to topology information supplied by another VMware Smart Assurance application. This connection is not shown in Flow of event information in a basic Global Manager configuration.

Efficient notification processing presents the most important information to the operator who uses a Global Console. One of the goals of deployment design is to plan to optimize the flow of notifications sent through the system. This improves the performance of the deployment and the performance of the operators who use VMware Smart Assurance products.