Asset Tag does not show up in IM Agent

[Rob Buxton]

Hi All,

This may not be an IM issue, but hey it's my favourite forum.
On a DL6400R (W2003) I'ved used the SmartStart CD to update the Asset Tag info in the BIOS. I went back in and the field has been updated.

But, it's not being picked up by the IM Agent. If I drill down to the System Info, the Asset Tag info is still blank.

Where does the IM Agent look for this info on the Server?
At this point I am not looking at the Reports info. this is purely at the System Info from the IM Agent on the Server.

[Tim McGue]

Rob,

I don't know how much this helps, but it appears to be not pulling from WMI, a file, or a registry. It appears to be a SNMP call. The parameter appears to be "cpqSiAssetTag". Take a look at this page:

http://www.assure24.com/product/1039-snmp-mibs-download.htm

What lead me to this thought was watching a filemon hit the cf-sinfo.tpf file. Take a look for that variable mentioned above and you can see what I'm talking about.

It looks like all this information is written to the file named CF-SINFO.FRM. There for me it is all blanks but we don't set our asset tag.

Hopefully this isn't leading you in the wrong direction, but I think this is correct.

Tim

[Rob Buxton]

Tim,
A nice document, but I'm still unclear where this is looking.
One thing I did find, the section I changed in the BIOS is actually under the Header of Proliant Integrated Management which is labelled as "Not Installed". Where this gets installed I don't know. There's a PIM Utility, but that reports that the function is disabled. Seems to be fairly low level stuff.

This could be a result of the way the Server was built, it's a 6400R with W2003, so I had to start with SmartStart 5.50 and then go for a manual W2003 install once the Array was configured.

I'm trying to enhance our reporting, it would be nice if we could make the Asset Tag available as then there would be a consistent location for the info, and that would be the IM Database.

[Rob Buxton]

Tim,
FYI, I added an Asset Tag using the RBSU on a later generation Server and it shows up in the reports.

It may be that the older Servers, possibly those without the RBSU cannot be configured to display the Asset Tag.

I've not found any info on this.

As before, it seems the older Asset Tag info was available on the Integrated Management Display Utility, but that seems to only work for older Servers (e.g. 6500's) and again the added info doesn't show up in IM.

[Tim McGue]

Rob,

I did the same experiment here. I put the info into asset tag line #1 and it showed up on the system info report. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I don't have any old servers that don't utilize the RBSU to test your theory out, but it sounds like your on to something. You could verify it with the Windows Support Tools "snmputilg.exe". The OID for the asset tag is:

.1.3.6.1.4.1.232.2.2.2.3.0

Tim

[Rob Buxton]

Tim,

I'd go for fortunate! we're still running Proliant 5000's that have gone End of Service Life, so we're on a wing and a prayer!

The SNMP idea is interesting but doesn't really help if I can't see the Asset Tag details from the Reports menu. I'm trying to get the reporting for Management to be a simple report.
I tried using the SNMP Explorer from IM 7 to read the Asset Tag on the older Servers and it reported a blank. That utility seems to have been dropped from IM 7 so thanks for the pointer.

[David Claypool]

Tim was on the right track with SNMP. Data collection uses SNMP to get its data from the agents. If the OID comes up blank, neither IM7 nor hpSIM will be able to collect the data.

[Rob Buxton]

David,
Thanks for the clarrification.
It does work on the new Servers with RBSU.
On the older ones there's an Asset location you can populate via the SmartStart Utility. Alas, this seems to be reachable only with the Integrated Management Display Utility and then only on selected Servers.
When the Agent builds its System Info Page, I'm guessing this uses the same SNMP info. so again, if it doesn't appear there it's not going to be reachable by any other SNMP Probing, unless it's reachable via a different MIB. In which case it's unlikely the IM Reports would see it. It was kind of that angle I was referring to.

[David Claypool]

Each field in the reports section maps to a specific OID. It doesn't look at one OID and if blank checks another one.

I'm guessing that this isn't instrumented by the systems management controller driver for the older systems.