VMWare ESX 3.0.1 and HP SIM

[Brian Proteau]

I have loaded the 7.70 Agents for ESX 3.0.1. The System Management Homepage loads fine and shows some degraded and failed items.

The problem I'm having is monitoring with HPSIM. I am able to discover the server and manage it from HP SIM howerver; it doesn't show up as a server needing attention. The health looks fine fromHP SIM although it is not.

Is there something I'm missing? What do I need to do to get HP SIM to recognize the ESX server hardware is degraded?

[Rob Buxton · Accepted solution]

There's a hardware polling task that should pick this up.
It runs every 5 minutes, unless it's been changed.

What is the SMH reporting as failed?

[Brian Proteau]

The failed/degraded items are things I'm aware of (NIC and Fiber cards with no connection).

I seem to have resolved the problem but, I'm not sure why. Basically I commented out 2 community lines that were put in the snmpd.conf during agent installation.

# rwcommunity private server41.domain.pvt
# rocommunity public server41.domain.pvt

server41 is my HP SIM server. These entires were added when I was asked to enter the Autorized Management Station IP or DNS name. Is this something I should have left blank? I assumed when it asked for it, it wanted to know my HP SIM server information.

Below I've included the snmpd.conf from my ESX server.


# Following entries were added by HP Insight Management Agents at
# Wed Feb 21 17:52:16 CST 2007
dlmod cmaX /usr/lib/libcmaX.so
rwcommunity private 127.0.0.1
rocommunity public localhost
# rwcommunity private server41.domain.pvt
# rocommunity public server41.domain.pvt
trapcommunity public
trapsink localhost
syscontact root@localhost (edit snmpd.conf)
syslocation room1 (edit snmpd.conf)

# ---------------------- END --------------------
# Sample snmpd.conf containing VMware MIB module entries.

# This is a simple snmpd.conf that may help you test SNMP.
# It is not recommended for production use. Consult the
# snmpd.conf(5) man pages to set up a secure installation.


# VMware MIB modules. To enable/disable VMware MIB items
# add/remove the following entries.
dlmod SNMPESX /usr/lib/vmware/snmp/libSNMPESX.so

[Brian Proteau]

Scratch that. It seems I need to comment out the local host community string lines to get the HP SIM to show the server in a failed/degraded state.

Although, when I did, I no longer had access to the System Management Homepage.

I still haven't figured this out completley but, I think it has something to do with my SNMPD.CONF file.

[Rob Buxton]

We are talking two different things here, SNMP and the Agents.
SNMP on its own can be used to identify devices, in addition the agents use SNMP to send traps back to HPSIM. It's not involved in how the overall status is reported back to HPSIM.
e.g. when a device fails the agents generate a trap and send it back to HPSIM.

In addition we have the agents which, if a device has failed should change their status.
So if you logon to the SMH for the VMWare Host server the overall status should show green, yellow or orange, the latter two if a failure condition has been detected.
This overall condition is what HPSIM picks up.
SNMP does need to be correct, from what I can see the commented out lines need to be reapplied.
Here's my snmpd.conf file sorry for the wrapping; hpsim is my hpsim server.

dlmod cmaX /usr/lib/libcmaX.so
rwcommunity myprivate 127.0.0.1
rocommunity mypublic 127.0.0.1
rwcommunity myprivate hpsim.mycom.nz
rocommunity mypublic hpsim.mycom.nz
trapcommunity mypublic
trapsink hpsim.mycom.nz mypublic
syscontact root@localhost (edit snmpd.conf)
syslocation room1 (edit snmpd.conf)

# ---------------------- END --------------------
# Following entries were added by HP Insight Management Agents at
# Fri Nov 24 14:56:18 NZDT 2006

# ---------------------- END --------------------
# Sample snmpd.conf containing VMware MIB module entries.

# This is a simple snmpd.conf that may help you test SNMP.
# It is not recommended for production use. Consult the
# snmpd.conf(5) man pages to set up a secure installation.


# VMware MIB modules. To enable/disable VMware MIB items
# add/remove the following entries.
dlmod SNMPESX /usr/lib/vmware/snmp/libSNMPESX.so
[

[Brian Proteau]

Thanks for the information. I spent the day on the phone with a couple HP Engineer. One with HP SIM expertise the other has ESX experience. We tried several things but still the ovberall status of the server shows green in HP SIM. The engineer with ESX knowledge is trying to duplicate the problem in her lab. We'll see what they find.

I'm going to build another server and see if I have the same problem.

Whatever process HP SIM uses to determine overall status whether initiated from the server or the agents is not functioning. What I'd like is a lower level tool that could tell me what's not function correctly.

[Brian Proteau]

I've done additional testing including building another ESX server and installing the 7.70 agents on it, and installing the 7.60B agents. Both had the same issues.

I'm starting to think my problem is on the HP SIM side and not the agent side. I don't support our UNIX environment but, I noticed that all the LINUX servers we have in HP SIM are not behaving as you would expect. I'm wondering if there is something I need to do to "prepare" the HP SIM server for LINUX servers.

To restate the issue, I am able to discover the ESX 3.0.1 server. I receive all alerts in HP SIM. The Systems Managemnet Homepage works perfectly.

My only issue is the overall state of the server as reported in in HP SIM. It always reports healthy no matter what the actual state of the server is. I need that to function because our NOC staff use the "Servers that need Attention" window to determine when a server has an issue.

[Rob Buxton]

I've checked here and I'm getting a Minor status correctly reflected from a VMHost Server that does not have the ILO configured correctly. That corresponds to the status as reported by the agent when accessed directly.

It would almost seem that you're accessing the servers okay, via ping and snmp but not the agents themselves.
When you hover over the HW icon for the VM Host server does it give a status?

[Brian Proteau]

Yes. It shows "Health Status: Normal". One thing an HP SIM engineer had me do was an "Identify Systems" from the Options menu. Below are the results. I've also attached a screenshot of what the system looks like in HP SIM. Can you verify that yours is missing some of the fields like mine. I specifically cleared the IP field (that one does populate).


Starting identification process...
Checking for known running web servers.
Checking for System Management Home Page and other HP web agents.
Received a response from the system management homepage, this system supports SMH.
Checking for WBEM support on system.
This system does not have any SMI-S CIMOM installed
This system doesn´t have a server CIMOM installed, or cannot connect to it using all credentials specified
Running WBEM rules based identification.
Cannot get ComputerSystem WBEM/WMI data from the system
Running WS-Man identification.
Checking for SNMP support on system.
The system did not respond to SNMP, verify security settings and community strings.
Running SNMP base Cluster identification using common cluster MIB.
This was not a system with the common cluster MIBs supported.
Running HP ProLiant management agent identification
The system does not support SNMP.
Running HP NetServer identification.
The system does not support SNMP.
Running HP-UX SNMP identification.
The system does not support SNMP.
Running SNMP System Type Manager identification.
The system does not support SNMP.
Checking for DMI protocol support.
The system does not have Windows DMI support.
Running DMI System Type Manager identification.
The system does not have Windows DMI support.
Running HP-UX DMI identification.
The system does not have HP-UX DMI support.
Running HP/Compaq Desktop identification.
The system does not have Windows DMI support.
Running HP DMI Desktop identification.
The system does not have HP DMI Desktop support.
Running Generic DMI identification.
The system does not have Generic DMI support.
Checking for SSH protocol support.
The system supports SSH protocol
Running Storage identification.
Did not detect WBEM support on this system. Will not attempt storage identification. If this is a storage host, check WBEM credentials and make sure the providers and CIMOM are operational on the host.
Storage identification completed.
Running HP Service Guard Identification.
The system is not part of HP Service Guard cluster
idPluginStart.IPMCompatible
Running VM identification.
Checking for license data on system.
SMH trust status is true.
Running limited data collection for common attribute.
Done with limited data collection, checking retrieved data.
Building system relationships.
System identification done with this system.

[fishmn]

Have you found out why you cannot discover all the information about your server? I've got 2 of my 50 ESX boxes responding the same way to SIM. SNMP looks OK and is running with our standard config file.

SIM ID task shows this for SNMP

The system did not respond to SNMP, verify security settings and community strings.
Running SNMP base Cluster identification using common cluster MIB.
This was not a system with the common cluster MIBs supported.
Running HP ProLiant management agent identification
The system does not support SNMP.

I suspect something simple but its not clicking.