HP SIM - How to monitor a device? SNMP or WBEM?

[J_N_Rhodes]

Hi All,

I learned that if i have HP SIM server (CMS) in place then to get a particular device into HP SIM monitoring, i need to have 3 things in place:

1. Local admin credentials (user name & password) of that device by which CMS will discover it

2. Some ports(listed on online HP docs) should be open

and

3. SNMP service should be enabled and configured on that device to send traps to CMS.

Do i really need to have any other stuff enabled/configured on that device to get it into HP SIM monitoring....like WBEM/WMI etc?

[shocko]

Hi,

You don't need admin credentials on target devices if using SNMP, just need common read community names and CMS listed as trusted in the 'accept traps list' and list as a destination to send traps to. The difference between WBEM/SNMP are well documented in other threads on these boards.

[Sander-A]

SNMP is definately the easier way to go. You only need the server agents installed and point the snmp traps/access to your SIM server.

The one downside I have found is that snmp agents on my cms server for some reason stop listening for traps after a while and I need to cycle the service from time to time.

WBEM is more secure, but is harder to setup and much messier from a networking perspective if you're in a locked down environment.

[Tushar Bajpai]

To Discover a Devcie in HPSIM, HP SIM uses SSH (rarely), WBEM and SNMP etc.

Now to your question:

1. Local admin credentials (user name & password) of that device by which CMS will discover it

[Tushar] A device can be discovered fully using SNMP, in this case there is no need for credentials. Only HP SNMP Agents must be installed (SPP/ PSP) on the target node. With the introduction G8 Server it is possible even without SPP.

In Case of WBEM / WMI which is a secure protocol it needs Credentials for authentication, but can run with least priviliges (no need for Administrator or root privileges).

2. Some ports(listed on online HP docs) should be open:

[Tushar]: For SNMP it is 161 and 162 by default.

3. SNMP service should be enabled and configured on that device to send traps to CMS.

Thats correct.

[J_N_Rhodes]

Thanks Sander-A
Thanks Tushar

Can you please list what ALL protocols(SNMP/WBEM/SSH/OpenSSH etc.) one need to configure on a device (assuming all supported OS/Hardware/Storage etc is suposed to be managed - As in my case) to manage/monitor it fully using HP SIM?

Regards

[Sander-A]

You only need snmp configured with the ports Tushar listed and the community strings need to match on the SIM server and the client.

You can test it using an snmp utility such as Paessler SNMP Tester. If it can read from the host it should be good for SIM.

[J_N_Rhodes]

Thanks Sander....
This clears that ONLY SNMP needs to be configured on the device(server/storage/networking device) we want to monitor/manage fully using HP SIM

Can one get into a situation where WBEM or any other protocol is only the option left?

[Tushar Bajpai]

WBEM is the prefered protocol in HPSIM. WBEM is capable of giving more data as compared to SNMP.

But SNMP again based on its implementation that is UDP and connectionless.

[J_N_Rhodes]

Does it mean that one need to have "both" SNMP & WBEM configured and enabled on the devices one want to manage using HP SIM?

Regards

[shocko]

SNMP and WBEM are mutually exclusive. You can use one or the other or both. For windows systems later then G7, the WMI providers are quite fully featured but for older systems, I use the SNMP agents as they have better alerting capabilities in my opinion. Also, in secure environments WBEM might be preferable as it can be encrypted whereas SNMP is plaintext and would relay on IPSEC for encryption.

[pgarr]

In my opinion HP's implementation of wbem is lacking.   You can't filter events and for proper detection admin rights are required.  Try a discovery against hyper-v's for example.  

SNMP is easier to deal with if insight manager is in place.

[Tushar Bajpai]

One can discover using WBEM / WMI in HPSIM by using least privilege account.

Microsoft provideds documentation how to work with WMI using least privelege. 

[Sander-A]

I would like to used WBEM, but the overhead of setting it up much higher than snmp as well as if you're in an environment which uses Windows Firewall I haven't been able to get the proper ports to traverse the firewall even using the ports listed in the SIM security guide.

If someone could tell me which is the Wbem executable that might work to open it that way, but I haven't found it yet.

Additionally SNMP is supported on all HP devices which support SIM/Remote Insight so you're probably going to have to use SNMP anyway for anything other than servers.

I would really like a better alternative to SNMP since I have had problems with the trap reciever on the CMS, but I don't think WBEM is it.