LLDP and MSTP discovery not working in IMC 7.1

[Jens Vesterdahl]

Hello.

I'm evaluating IMC to replace my two PCM+ installations since the PCMs are now defunct.

I have installed the trial version of the IMC standard edition on a brand new machine running Windows server 2008 RC2.

ICM autodiscovery finds some of my devices, but not all. Also, it identifies some links, but not all. Seems at random which links are found. MSTP is not found at all.

Is there some SNMP setting I need to fix or what does not work out of the box in IMC?

For the record, I have 69 HP ProCurve switches, and for various reasons the entire network has been reassigned to a new subnet. I deleted all devices from my two PCM stations and let them discover the switches with a new seed. They both performed flawlessly and detected all links in the network, all VLANS and the MSTP setup without interference. Thus, I don't think there's anything wrong with the SNMP settings unless PCM knows how to bypass quirks in the switch software and IMC does not.

I have 2824, 2610, 2620, 2510, 5406zl and 6108 switches in the network.

Any ideas to what I need to do?

I'm not using the newest switch firmware. What the requirements for IMC? Operation manuals are scarce compared to PCM.

[Jens Vesterdahl]

On some of the switches, when I try to access the spanning tree info from the topology view in IMC, I get the message "Failed to access the device's spanning tree information" ... and an OK button.

Note to the IMC SW developers: It would be nice know how to fix the problem.

Why is this happening?

Are my switches running too old firmware? Especially the 2824 haven't been updated for a while according to the "if it's not broken, don't fix it" paradigm. They're running version I.10.67, but I can't find any "supported versions" list for IMC anywhere.

[Vince-Whirlwind]

Is the device running spanning-tree?
 

Because HP switches come with STP disabled by default, many, many of them out there in the wild have been installed with no STP enabled.

[Jens Vesterdahl]

Yes, many of my devices are running spanning tree, and I have 5 minor and major MSTP loops. This setup has been working for years, and the loops are regularly broken due to power being shut down during maintenance at the network sites. The network is designed specifically to cope with these scheduled interruptions.

[Jens Vesterdahl]

I have now managed to get IMC to build my network topology correctly, but it still does not show STP information.

Does anyone know if IMC is at all capable of showing blocked STP connections?

PCM+ for example shows blocked links with dotted lines.

Edit:

Okay, I found the MSTP icons above the topology view, and by enabling what IMC calls "CIST", I did get it to show the spanning tree loops.

Or sort of.

I have five blocking links, of which IMC only shows three, market with a small red x inside a red circle.

Three switches outside the loop were marked as participating in STP, but two of those have now been marked correctly. It would seem IMC is working on it, and I'll leave it until tomorrow to figure things out. IMC did in fact spot one switch which had spanning enabled where it shouldn't, so although I find IMC not very intuitive and certainly not tailor made for my use, it seems more accurate than PCM once you get things straigthened out.

[Jens Vesterdahl]

Looks like MSTP info is only retrieved from some of the switches. My main loop is made from primarily 2824 switches all running software version I.10.67. When I right-click on these in IMC and then click 'Spanning Tree', I get an error message saying 'Failed to access the device's spanning tree information'. It happens on some other types, but newer switches like e.g. my 5406zl's have no problem.

Does anyone know which switches are not supported by IMC?

[Jens Vesterdahl]

I finally managed to update one of the 2824 switches from firmware version I.10.67 to I.10.105.

This allows IMC to read the STP info from the switch, so I am guessing my issues are now mostly related to old versions. I'll update all switches that fail the STP reading and see how IMC responds.

[Jens Vesterdahl · Accepted solution]

I've now updated two 2824 switches at the ends of a link that I know is blocked to I-10.105.

IMC now recognizes the blocked link and marks it blocked in MSTP view.

Problem solved.