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My thoughts on agent 8.1.0 with ESX 3.5U2

 
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Olivier Masse
Honored Contributor

My thoughts on agent 8.1.0 with ESX 3.5U2

A few months ago, I posted a thread concerning a gotcha with agent 8.0.0 as NIC traps didn't work. I stuck with 7.9.1.

I tried and tested the recently released 8.1.0. The good news is that NIC traps seem to work correctly and are reported to SIM.

For those with Emulex HBAs, integrating the Emulex library with previous agents was a complicated (and risky) venture, now this is made fairly easy; just install the latest HBAnyware kit such as 2.1a40 and it will install the library directly in /usr/lib, which the agents will pick up upon restart.

I've had previous versions of the storage agents hang indefinitely when enabling the Emulex libraries and unplugging/replugging fibers (impossible to kill -9 some processes, and reboot of ESX was required). I didn't install them back then. This no longer happens with the new agents and library.

However, link loss on Emuelx HBAs are still *NOT* reported by the agents. As a matter of fact, if you unplug a fiber cable, the whole SMH webpage reports nothing until it's plugged back in. So those of you who need to monitor this will need to rely on a homemade solution.

If anybody has similar experiences and made the storage agent work, I'll be glad to hear from you.

Good luck

3 REPLIES 3
Charlie88
Occasional Advisor
Solution

Re: My thoughts on agent 8.1.0 with ESX 3.5U2

Am also testing 8.1.0 in ESX 3.5U2 with some issues.

The NIC agents detect failed NICs ok, however I don't get a trap. I can generate test traps + also get traps for failed disk so I'm sure SNMP config is correct.

HBA does not detect failure (am using Qlogic with the required libraries installed).

Am still running SIM 5.1 SP1 so not sure if this has any bearing on not getting the NIC traps. Will try upgrading to SIM 5.2 SP2.

7.9.1 works ok for both NIC + HBA traps.

Seems like these agents are going backwards in functionality. 7.7.0 never did NIC or HBA traps, then 7.8.0 fixed NIC and then 7.9 fixed HBA.

Now with 8.1.0 seem to have lost this functionality again. If I can't find a fix soon then will stay on 7.9.1 - need to have reliable info on the state of my hardware.
Maxitaly_1
Advisor

Re: My thoughts on agent 8.1.0 with ESX 3.5U2

Hi Olivier

My configuration:
- PL 380 G4
- ESX 3.5 U1
- agnet 8.1.0
- SIM server 5.2 (5.02.00 - no SP)

In this configuration the SIM server don't receive the trap of a NIC failure.
Same problem on a Windows 2003 server using Agent 8.11.
In both situations the System Management Homepage reports the failure.

Could you detail your configuration / snmp.conf file ?

Many thanks and best regards
Max
Olivier Masse
Honored Contributor

Re: My thoughts on agent 8.1.0 with ESX 3.5U2

My snmp.conf is fairly standard -- didn't change anything in it.

From my understanding, when I investigated the NIC issue with 8.0.0, the SNMP OIDs (if that's the correct name) for the traps had changed and were not supported by the SIM server.

We're running SIM 5.2 patch 1, and it probasbly includes the correct OIDs to support this.