ESX SNMP settings

[NJK-Work]

For an ESX box running the HP agents, which of the following needs to be set to the Community name set at the SIM console?

rwcommunity Central 127.0.0.1
rocommunity public localhost
rwcommunity public hidden
rocommunity public
trapcommunity public
trapsink localhost

Do rocommunity, rwcommunity, and trapsink all need to point to the host name of my SIM server. Or is the "localhost" correct for RO and my RW setting (set to hidden for this purpose) correct? What should trapsink be set to?

Nelson

[NJK-Work]

I think I understand the most of my question, now that I actually looked at the settings more carefully.

I guess what I don't understand is the last two entries:

trapcommunity public
trapsink localhost

Should these be set to our private community name and the host name of our SIM server? Our ESX admin set these, and he really does not do much with SIM, so I don't think he understood our requirements.

Nelson

[Rob Buxton · Accepted solution]

Pretty much, the trapcommunity is the community name you want to use for the outgoing snmp traps and trapsink will be the HPSIM Server.
Just like for windows you need to allow localhost as well as the HPSIM Server.
Mine looks like:

rwcommunity RWCom 127.0.0.1
rocommunity ROCom 127.0.0.1
rwcommunity RWCom hpsim.myco.co.nz
rocommunity ROCom hpsim.myco.co.nz
trapcommunity ROCom
trapsink 10.x.x.x ROCom

I recommend editing and using the hpmgmt.conf.example file and using that in a silent install. It means you get snmp correctly configured much easier.
Note there are items you need to uncomment in the example file.

[David Claypool]

Going back a couple of posts to Nelson, there is no need to send a trap to localhost, only to the HP SIM server (and any other destination you desire).

To Rob's most recent entry, you do not need (and it's a best practice not) to allow a read-write community for anything but localhost. HP SIM does not use a write community string over the wire ever.

[Rob Buxton]

David,
Cheers, I'll be a bit more careful when editing / reviewing the example config file to ensure a RW community isn't added.

[NJK-Work]

Thanks all. That is what I kind of figured, but I wanted to make sure.

Nelson

[NJK-Work]

See posts from Rob and David.