# NMS OAM overview

NMS OAM can manage hardware components, such as NMS boards, or software components, such as the NMS Hot Swap process. Resources can be located on one CPU, or on multiple CPUs connected over an IP network. Components being managed by NMS OAM are called managed components.

You can access NMS OAM functionality in one of the following ways:

- Using the NMS OAM service. The NMS OAM service is a standard Natural Access service. This manual describes how to access NMS OAM this way.

- Using the oamsys, oamcfg, oammon, and oaminfo utilities included with NMS OAM. For more information on these utilities, refer to the NMS OAM System User's Manual.

You can perform the following tasks using NMS OAM:

- Create, delete, and query component configurations

- Start, stop, and test components

- Receive notifications from components

- Detect boards in a system

- Perform detailed management of configuration settings

- Export or import configuration data