Operations Sentinel must be able to recognize and respond to messages sent from managed systems. UNIX and Linux systems generally conform to a display standard called ANSI X3.64-1979. Operations Sentinel provides automation only for those systems providing ANSI X3.64-compliant interfaces.

In addition, Operations Sentinel can only automate line-at-a-time interfaces. It cannot automate full screen interfaces, as some screen information may be picked up multiple times if individual boxes in a line are updated rather than the entire line.

However, you can still manage systems that use full screen displays. This permits you to centralize control of the system using a console screen opened by Operations Sentinel Console. Also, you can use information displayed on the full screen display to raise and clear alerts, and Operations Sentinel Logging can record this information in log files. To accurately manage full screen displays, you must configure the connection in a specific way.