Using SIM to automate/manage HP-UX nodes

[Chetan_5]

We are using a windows CMS with HP-UX managed nodes primarily for error reporting. I was wondering if anyone out there is using it to push patches, run custom tools etc.

There seems to be a lot of documentation about the various SIM plugins/providers i.e. Virtual server manager, capacity advisor etc but not clear guidance on the benefits/implementation

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

For HP-UX patches are better managed by being set up as depots on an Ignite server.

If the Ignite server has rights to ssh into servers without password, patches can be pushed as well.

SEP

[Michael Leu]

I'm not a big fan of pushing patches automatically and giving SIM the root password...

Check out Software Assistant http://hp.com/go/swa as a tool for keeping your systems up to date. But currently it only integrates into a HP-UX CMS: http://forums.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=1375790

[Olivier Masse]

I use SIM for hardware error reporting, system health monitoring, contract and warranty management, and system inventory. For these tasks, it has been proven invaluable. But I don't use it for anything else.

Trying to integrate homemade application-level monitoring scripts into SIM have proven to be hard to realize so I decided to deploy Nagios in parallel to SIM.

And even after all these years of seeing "SIM this, SIM that" in almost every HP presentation, I'm still thinking that most of the disparate system-administration tasks possible from within SIM don't give a lot of real value to experienced system administrators. If anybody can tell me otherwise, I'll be glad to hear from you but that's what I think of it.

Furthermore, some HP-UX related SIM plugins (SWA comes to mind) that can benefit from a centralized view only work on an HP-UX CMS. Since HP kind of forced me to deploy a Windows CMS to run Remote Support, I'm not very keen to add a second CMS on HP-UX.

Olivier.

[Chetan_5]

We are a small team that are responsible for multiple servers and applications. It would be nice if SIM could perform updates for low impact patching like SSH, GLance etc. Also I think you could assign SD-UX priveleges for non-root users using setaccess.
Whats also nice is that SIM maintains the task logs for review, so you have one central location that you could point auditors etc who might be interested in them.

I am also checking to see if SIM can create custom reports for server information like hardware versions, WWNs etc,.

[Rick Garland]

SIM does have its advantages, but for HPUX nodes it is somewhat braindead. As mentioned, use depots to manage patches. For hardware issues you can configure EMS. System health and performance you can write simple shell/perl scripts to provide that information. Yes, SIM is fine for contracts and such as mentioned, but for monitoring systems health and performance find another package. If $ is a constraint there are many freeware/Open Source packages available. Allow me to plug one, Nagios. It is a freebie and HP has provided some of the tools precompiled for HPUX. And as I mentioned simple shell/perl scripts will get you where you want to be.