HP SIM > multiple servers at remote site

[simon wilks]

Afternoon.

Ive read this to death, I see in the guides that i need to setup the webm / wmi proxy on one server at the remote site. as I can have just one nat rulel of 5989 to one single IP at the remote site.

My questions is how does this proxy then communicate to the other servers at this remote site. how do I tell the other servers to pass to the the wbem proxy?

Thanks in advance

[Mahmoud Ibrahim]

Hi Simon,


As far as I know
- if you have servers in a DMZ with no ports enabled to allow HP SIM (CMS) to collect identification information.
- You need to install WMI Mapper Software on one of the servers (prefered to be Windows client machine) and open the communication port as in your original question.
- Add the node information to HP SIM as per the instructions
Add a WMI Mapper Proxy. Select Options->Protocol Settings->WMI Mapper Proxy[New].

- Whenever you add a node (this is what is called Discovery in HP SIM)
HP SIM will try to connect directly to the node using the Global Protocol Settings if it failes to directly connect to those systems, it will try to connect through the WMI Proxy that you privously added, once the WMI proxy contacts this node, it will forward the data back to the CMS
Options->Protocol Settings->Global Protocol Settings.


you do not need to configure the Remote machines with any settings to be able to communicate with the CMS nor the WMI Mapper

Regards,
Mahmoud Ibrahim

[Mahmoud Ibrahim]

HI Simon,

I am putting more clarification for WMI Mapper on the below

To allow HP SIM to communicate to Systems with WMI you have to configure Global Protocol Settings
Options->Protocol Settings->Global Protocol Settings.

To understant how HP SIM communicates with clients when WBEM option is enabled in Protocol Settings.
1-1st the HP SIM will try to connect to the newly discovered node by the username\password configured to WBEM port (5988 )
2-If failed HP SIM will try to connect to the alternate version of WBEM like WMI which is microsoft implementation of WBEM but it uses RPC communication
If failed by Both the system will not be recognized (discovered) by HP SIM and others protocols will be tried like HTTP is it is enabled

3-If you have added WMI Mapper Proxy to HP SIM then a third try will be initiated by HP SIM through sending the identification request to the WMI Mapper node through port 5988/5989
This request will be sent as XML formated over HTTP(s), the WMI Mapper Service will receive the request and will transformed it back to RPC and will try to communicate with this node (IP Address of the newly discovered node)
as long as the WMI Mapper is located in side the DMZ it will be able to communicate without any issue.
Once the node respond to the WMI mapper (surely through RPC), the WMI Mapper will conver this to XML Formated and will forward it to HP SIM.

Regards,
Mahmoud Ibrahim

[Mahmoud Ibrahim]

My resources:

Check WBEM section on http://www.hp.com/wwsolutions/misc/hpsim-helpfiles/mxhelp/mxportal/en/admin_protocols_ref.html

Page 7 on http://h10018.www1.hp.com/wwsolutions/misc/hpsim-helpfiles/MANAGINGHPServers-withHPSIM.pdf

Page 22 Left side of the "Architecture overview" on ftp://compaq.com.co/pub/softlib2/software1/doc/p1337411828/v46142/HP_Insight_Management_WBEM_Providers_User_Guide.pdf

WBEM Introduction http://140.134.26.20/wbem/

TCP Port 5988 Information http://www.pc-library.com/ports/tcp-udp-port/5988/

WMI Mapper Proxy on Page 571 http://bizsupport1.austin.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c01506564/c01506564.pdf
The statement is:

1- The WMI Mapper Proxy is a configuration setting for WMI.
2- The WMI Mapper receives client CIM/XML WBEM requests and converts the requests to Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) requests.
3- The WMI results are converted to CIM/XML format and returned to the Central Management Server (CMS).
4- The discovery and Identification task uses the proxies in the WMI Mapper Proxy list to discover whether a system is a WMI-enabled system.
5- If the system is WMI-enabled, then the identification information for that system based on that specific proxy is returned.


(the best document for firewall settings )Page 8 on Managing HP servers through firewalls with Insight Software 6.0 or greater White Paper http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02112422/c02112422.pdf


Regards,
Mahmoud Ibrahim

[Mahmoud Ibrahim]

Hi Simon,
If you want more clarification, I am willing to help.

Regards,
Mahmoud Ibrahim

[simon wilks]

Thanks for the response.

I havent fixed this yet its taking some reading. Its taking me some time to go through I wanted to get a thankyou out! didnt want you to think im arrogant...

Still not working. theres sure to be some questions to follow, ill have another go the weekend

Si

[cez]

Hi Mahmoud,

I need your help or someone's help on event notification.

The discovery/identification of the Windows servers behind the firewall was fine. However, we were not able to get the WBEM events to the SIM server. We have tried many different ports and WMI wrapper according to documentation unsuccessfully. We also have called HP tech support and have it escalated but so far they are of no help. It seems like WBEM uses some random ports and there is no way for security team to open whole bunch of random ports.

The document
http://h10018.www1.hp.com/wwsolutions/misc/hpsim-helpfiles/ManagingHPServers-withHPSIM.pdf mentioned about Fault Management on page 8. Is that meant the events can only be sent using either SNMP traps or SMTP email?

Is there a way to get the WBEM events over to SIM server?

Regards,
Cez

[Mahmoud Ibrahim]

Hi Cez,

WBEM Events are sent to port 50004 "WBEM event Receiver port" Check http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bc/docs/support/SupportManual/c02112422/c02112422.pdf

Regards,
Mahmoud Ibrahim
http://www.mahmoudthoughts.com

[cez]

Hi Mahmoud,

I asked my networking guy to open port 50004 and also ports 5988 and 5989. I then sent a couple of events using "HP Test WBEM Event Tool". The event didn't go through. Any other ideas to try?

Regards,
Cez

[TrevorT]

This is an old post - but this is exactly the issue I'm facing.  In the "Managing HP servers through firewalls with Insight Software 6.0 or greater White Paper" pdf, it says,

"It is recommended that the WMI Mapper be installed on the managed system so that these faults can be sent using WBEM (CIM-XML/HTTP) through the firewall".

This leads me to believe that using WMI Mapper as a proxy for handling events is useless.  It is my understanding that you need to install the WMI Mapper on all systems behind the proxy if you want them to send events via WBEM (as opposed to SNMP or email).  Email seems useless if you're trying to use HP SIM as the maangement system - unless HP SIM has an email server that can process the SMTP messages and update the status of the items in inventory via SMTP.

If that's the case - just be more staith up and tell us: for Windows Servers behind firewalls, WMI Mapper must be installed if you want the servers to send events to HP SIM (and why wouldn't you - that's the purpose of SIM right?).

If anyone is monitoring this old thread, I would appreciate input / insight.  I'll be doing testing.