what method of ISEE and Predictive support is using to contact HP?

[Hanry Zhou]

I know they both are not using sendmail, but what other method these two tools are using to communicate with HP response center?
if it is http, but I don't have httpd running on the server.

I know Predictive is old version of support tool. but do I have to have the modem connection to dial out/in?

Thanks,

[Mel Burslan · Accepted solution]

ISEE standalone client, when installed on any hpux server, runs its own webserver on port 5060 by default. If you are inside the firewall where this server is located, you can access this webserver and gather the inforamtion and see the activity that ISEE is performing, by simply pointing your browser to

http://servername.domain.com:5060

How it communicates with hp is again using http, but it is not through the webserver. When ISEE captures an event, it sends the details about this even to a server at

isee.americas.hp.com

address as an http request and once it initiates the connection to the server at hp, the back and forth communications can go through the same channel.

to make the long story short, you will not need to punch any holes in your firewall from the incoming side. You just need to let http requests from inside, going outside the firewall pass thru.

This is for the simple, standalone installation. If you go with what hp is pushing to their clients which has more than a handful servers, which is having a central watchdog server placed in your premises, I think the communication of that watchdog with hp, needs to be more permissive.

[Hanry Zhou]

Thanks for the message.

what about predictive? Do I have to start "sendmail" daemon for predictive support. I know it is old package, but I just wanted to know.

[Mel Burslan]

I do not think that predictive receives anything from HP via email, just sends them. Just sending email, you do not have to start sendmail as a daemon. whenever necessary, predictive will invoke sendmail and send the pending message(s).

Take my words with a grain of salt as my experience with predictive support is very skinny.

[Frank Alden Smith]

Hanry,

Predictive uses SMTP, or direct modem connection to send hardware events to the HP Support Center.

Here are some facts about Predictive and ISEE that might influence your decision about which remote support solution to use.

1) Predictive and ISEE are incompatible - that is they must not be run on the same system. If you install ISEE on a server running Predictive, ISEE will disable Predictive. Similarly, if you are running ISEE and install Predictive, then Predictive will disable ISEE.

2) In February 2004, HP announced that:

"Starting April 1, 2004, the Predictive tool on HP-UX systems will be configured to shut itself down. After the tool is shut down, no more events from your system will be sent to HP."

Hope that helps.

Take care,
frank