Pictorial-based user interface management of computer hardware components

摘要

An apparatus, program product and method utilize a displayed pictorial representation that depicts the actual physical configuration of a plurality of hardware components in a physical computer system to facilitate the collective management of the underlying hardware components. Typically, within such a pictorial representation, a selected status is displayed for multiple of such hardware components, thereby permitting hardware components sharing common attributes or characteristics to be identified in an efficient and intuitive manner, as well as to permit collective management operations to be performed on all selected hardware components. In addition, a pictorial representation may be dynamically generated to represent the physical configuration of a plurality of hardware components within a plurality of computers. In connection with such dynamic generation, the plurality of computers may be accessed to identify the plurality of hardware components that are resident in such computers. Moreover, management operations may be performed on selected hardware components in response to user input directed to those portions of the pictorial representation that represent the physical configurations of such selected hardware components.