Insight Manager 7.5.0 discovery faults

[QuintijnNL]

Hi folks,

I'm currently building a new HP Insight Manager for our Managed Environment where many different customer IT environments are connected with. 

I have run the first time wizard and configured a couple of servers within the autodiscover window.

Unfortunately on every server I get a couple of errors. I have read many articles and topics on this forum but am lost in all information. Can someone please help me out?

Major: The system cannot be identified properly for HP SIM to manage;
unable to get one or more of the following: model, serial number or
unique identifier (UUID). For management processors, verify the
system is running the latest firmware. For Linux based operating
systems, you must have dmidecode installed, enable the
PermitRootLogin and PasswordAuthentication in sshd, and use root
sign-in credential. For HP-UX, verify the sign-in credential. For
Windows, check if WMIMapper is configured correctly on the CMS and
verify the sign-in credential.

Normal: Identification status is only available for servers, workstations,
or desktops, where monitoring is enabled. <-- is this one caused by the one above?

Minor: Identification cannot get computer system hardware data from the
WBEM / WMI providers.

Hope to hear from you.

[n0kia]

What type of servers are you trying to monitor?

What agents/providers are you running on those systems?

What OS?

[ChrisAbbott]

There are a number of things that can cause this.

First, check the HP SMHP on each server and check that it can see the server hardware details.

If not, you are most likely missing the WBEM software.

In addition, you may need to swap the provider on the homepage from SNMP to WBEM or visa-versa.

You also need SNMP running on the server.

On top of all that, don't forget firewall ports need opening between your SIM server and the SMHP servers.

If I remember rightly, some servers also require a Power Manager driver to be installed. Can't remember the exact name of this off the top of my head, but it has something to do with the interface to iLO.

[Quintijn-NL]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for the replies. I will come back to you beginning of next week when I will continue on the project.

Cheers

[Quintijn-NL]

@n0kia

All are HP Proliant DL 3*0 Gen6/7/8/9 servers. 2008 R2 and/or 2012R2 is installed.

WBEM providers are installed. HP System Management Homepage and all other HP Tools are installed.  SNMP protocol is reachable when I use a SNMP test tool.

[Quintijn-NL]

@ChrisAbbott

HP System Management Homepage is working fine. Datasource SNMP & WBEM showing all hardware and health is OK.

All traffic is setup via site-to-site VPN's and ports are opened. Communication is also not the problem.

Is it possible that it has something to do with security? 

[ChrisAbbott]

Firewall would be the next obvious issue.

Port 5989 for WBEM.

Port 2301 and 2381 for SMHP.

Port 63000 for VC agent.

[ChrisAbbott]

Forgot... you will also need the SMHP on the machine in question to trust the SIM server.

You can either push out a certificate from within SIM (Configure > Configure or Repair Agents) or manually import it.

The certificate is held in C:\hp\sslshare\cert.pem on the SIM server.

[Andrew_Haak]

For SNMP agents you need to correctly set you settings, you need to be allowed to access the server in the SNMP config. You also need to know and set the community string in SIM under the credentials settings. Then you need to be able to access the server trough firewall(s).

If you use WBEM tou need an Admin account to access the server and then again the firewall ofcource. Try to avoid to use both at the same time.

SNMP needs to have traps configured in the SNMP settings and when using WBEM you need te set a WBEM subscription from SIM. A trust is not needed from a monitoring perspective, only if you want to be able to passtrough from SIM. If you use a GEN8 or newer you should not install WBEM/SNMP agents or SMH.

[Quintijn-NL]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the reply.

Can someone tell me how to disable wbem check within the system insight manager? I only want to scan on SNMP. 

SNMP is configured. Traps and strings are set and SNMP communication is ok

[Andrew_Haak]

If you want to disable protocols log into SIM, click On Options > Protocol Settings Global Protocol Settings. Look at the WBEM settings and clear the Enable WBEM box, this way you will not use the WBEM in discovery and Identification. Any other protocol like SSH can also be disabled here.

[Quintijn-NL]

Thanks for the fast reply.

I just discovered the comment above where was said that gen 8 and 9 you just have to monitor the ILO interface of the server. When I do that I get a complete status in the discovery so thats good.

Does it monitor the server completely for all alerts (SNMP)? So it's the same monitoring as you would monitor the server itself for Gen 7 or before)?

[Andrew_Haak]

Hello again and good morning,

Yes if you use the Agentless Management Service software and configure the ILO to use the AMS and that it forwards the SNMP traps to the SIM server it should work just fine. The real advantage to this is that for any OS you don't need credentials to identify and get datacollection OS/Firmware information. This way you don't need the SNMP/WBEM agents and the SMH wich always has openSSL problems. If you connect the ILO to a seperate monitor VLAN you get a more secure setup.

I also modified the Initial and By weekly Datacollection for the Gen8 & Gen9 servers as the real info only comes from the ILO so if there are any extra credentials they don't get used by the Datacollection. so the Datacollection conflicts will stay away. For this to work you need to create a collection that excludes Gen8& Gen9 servers and use that collection in the buildin Initial and Bi Weekly Datacollection.

To be complete try to remove credentials for OS from your general credentials and only use them to run discovery jobs for non Gen8 & Gen9 servers. 

[Quintijn-NL]

Thanks again!

last questions.

1. I have disabled WBEM in the SIM server. I receive the following message in the discovery results. Can i somehow disable this alert?"Major: WBEM is not enabled on the Central Management Server"

2. For agentless management. Do I need to buy a optional license? We have an ILO advanced license on all servers. Is that enough? No software needed on the server? Just configure ILO and SNMP I assume?

[Andrew_Haak]

To answer the first, strangly enough no. You would think if you intensionaly disable a protocol you just don't want logging to give errors about that. If you look at the logging the real important errors are shownin the first portion. under the ********* Additional results (listed for information only): line the info is optional and only needed for troubleshooting identification issues. 

For Agentless monitoring you don't need extra licences. For once it's free. Don't forget to uninstall the agents, the export the nodes, delete them and re-add as SIM remebers this it was able to use the old protocols.

[Quintijn-NL]

I need to uninstall the software? Why can't I just let it installed as is it?

HPSIM is just a trigger/monitoring tool for us. We use HP System Management and HP Tools on the server to support further errors.

[Andrew_Haak]

Hello again,

From a monitoring point of view you can leave all agents and protocols on. The only problem is that you can get errors for datacollection info for the servers. This is of no issue from a monitoring point of view only if you need hardware/software info as this can get broken.