The following specification is a guide to a PC configuration for running Athene. We refer to it as a "recommended minimum" configuration. Elements of Athene will run successfully on a smaller PC than this recommended minimum.

However, if either of the following conditions applies:

• You will be using Control Center to collect and process data from a large number of target systems, and/or
• You want to use several Athene applications at the same time

then we recommend that your PC should be at least as powerful as the following specification.
You will probably wish to run the other Athene applications on a different machine from the Control Center system, if you intend to capture and collect data continuously.

Hardware Requirements
If you are purchasing a new machine to run the Athene Control Center , then we would recommend the following:

• 2.8 GHz (or better) Pentium 4 or equivalent CPU. Athene 8.0 makes very effective use of a multi-CPU system.
• 1024 MB of main memory
• 80 GB fixed disk drive (either local or SAN-attached)
• CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive if you intend installing Athene from CD-ROM.
• For running Athene applications we would recommend a monitor and video card capable of displaying 64K colors at 1280 * 1024 resolution. For comfort and ease of use, we recommend a minimum screen size of 19" for a CRT (17" for a TFT). For a machine running just the Control Center service then an SVGA monitor and video card capable of displaying 64K colors at 1024 * 768 resolution is recommended.
• Network interface card
• Keyboard and mouse or equivalent (e.g. KVM switch for a rack-mounted system).

You should also bear in mind the need to back up your Athene Performance Database, e.g. by purchasing a tape backup unit.

These recommended hardware specifications are intended to provide satisfactory performance in the majority of situations.

Software Requirements
Please note that the following requirements apply to the main Athene software, not to the Athene Windows Acquire. Please refer to the Athene User Guide for Acquire's software requirements.

• The operating system for running Athene must be Windows 2000 at SP3 or above or Windows XP Professional at SP2 or above or Windows Server 2003 at SP1 or above. For security reasons we recommend you have the latest Windows Service Packs and critical updates installed. You also require Internet Explorer 5.5 or above.
• The Athene 8.0 Setup process will install the Microsoft .Net Framework v2.0 on your system if it is not already present
• If you intend to use Athene's Automatic Reporting to produce Word documents or Excel spreadsheets then the appropriate modules of Microsoft Office 2000 or Office XP or Office 2003 must be installed.
• If you intend to use Athene's Automatic Reporting to email processed reports then the machine on which the reports are scheduled to be produced will require either a MAPI compliant email client (e.g. Microsoft Outlook) or the ability to send mail using SMTP.
• If you you want to view the APR Home Page , then each system from which you want to view it must have a DOM-compliant browser such as Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.5 or above installed. (The APR Home Page is where you can view the reports and bulletins that have been dispatched by Schedule Editor to a structure defined by Athene's APR Configuration Manager.)
• Athene now uses Microsoft SQL Server as the database technology for the Athene Performance Database (PDB). You must ensure that your copy of SQL Server is at SQL Server 2000 Service Pack 3a or above (to prevent attack by the Slammer virus), or SQL Server 2005.

The full list of pre-requisites for installing SQL Server is available at:
www.microsoft.com/sql/evaluation/sysreqs/2000/default.asp

For further help in choosing which version of SQL Server 2000 to use, please see:
www.microsoft.com/sql/techinfo/planning/SQLResKChooseEd.asp

You should not attempt to use the Microsoft SQL Server Desktop Engine (MSDE) because it only supports databases up to 2GB in size. The only circumstance where the MSDE could be used is on an Athene Concentrator Control Center .

Communications Environment
For collecting data from Windows, UNIX or Linux systems Athene supports FTP, SSH (with which we use Secure FTP) or any protocol that works through the Windows redirector, e.g. NFS, SMB etc. Any communication protocols which support file transfer are suitable for delivery of z/OS data.

Acquire Host Software
On most UNIX and Linux systems Metron provides pre-compiled binaries for the Acquire data capture agent. On a few systems there is a requirement to provide a C compiler on the system from which you want to capture data.