In the case of a directly connected system, the physical configuration determines the primary Operations Sentinel server. The server to which the console port of the managed system is connected is the primary Operations Sentinel server.

For systems that are directly connected to an Operations Sentinel server, and for systems that are connected using TELNET or SSH, the physical configuration determines the primary Operations Sentinel server.

The managed system can be connected to two Operations Sentinel servers through a splitter or multiple TELNET or SSH sessions as discussed in “Resiliency [UNIX].” Each of these servers are considered as a primary Operations Sentinel server because the data is being supplied concurrently to both Operations Sentinel servers and input is being accepted by the system from both servers.