Modify to Discover Cisco UCS Rack/Chassis

[Joe Vuong]

Hi,

I am curious to know if anyone have attempted to update/modify the discovery scripts to identify Cisco UCS Servers?

This is beyond simple upload of MIBs and OID mapping available the GUI, but get into the backend of the ID process either via Ssh or HTTP.

J

[BPE]

Hi ,

The screen shoot is missing. But if you do the discovery by HP SIM you can play with the system type management.

But for sure the discovery as HP component will fail. SN and PN extraction of non HP devices are possible but for sure undocumented.

[Joe Vuong]

Hi BPE,

Appreciate the response, and its these undocumented information is what I'm interested before I start reverse eng the process to save some time.

It might seem duff to use a HP SIM to monitor/manage another vendor's server hardware, but I am sure this is not the only case where most company's infratructure estate are all made up of HP servers (or from 1 vendor). We have a handful of Cisco UCS rackmounts and I can't see the justification of procuring Cisco Management products. To this point, HP should ensure SIM is more open to heterogeneous environments.

J

[BPE]

Hi J,

Undocumented is perhaps not the right expression for this  situation. Many years ago  HP published a withe papers for HP SIM "How to support non HP devices which are  SNMP based". The exact name I do not remember. 

HP SIM allows technical to receive SNMP traps which you can transform to a use full text by checking the existing MIB folder for examples. The mx comannds to handle and compile the MIB files is also documented.

The System Type Management is also supported by the GUI and mxstm command.

In the forum you should find a lot of hints to get SNMP devices integrated.

Some keyword should by SNMP mxstm mcompile mxmib

Please check also the current license info. I am not sure if HP SIM is free for non HP devices.

Have fun

BPE 

eg. In the  white paper  infrastructure management  using the HP SIM command line interface 

you will find the following text:

Third-party device management
HP SIM can manage third-party equipment if the equipment management agents and fault management mechanisms adhere to industry standards like SNMP and WBEM. HP SIM provides system definitions for a number of third-party systems. The System Type Manager enables you to modify existing definitions, add new definitions for equipment unknown to HP SIM, and remove definitions using the mxstm command.
Through the command line, the mxstm command enables you to add, remove, and list system type definitions. For more information on this command, see the mxstm man page.
7
To add a new system type definition, use one of the following commands:
# mxstm –a –n product-name –p protocol (–x attribute=value)+ # mxstm –a –f stmfile.xml
• The –n product-name option specifies the product name of the product you want to add. For example, HP rx1600 is a product name.
• The –p protocol option selects the protocol to use for data collection, and should be set to SNMP.
• The –x option provides the definitions for one or more attributes for the system. Examples of SNMP
attributes are the system OID, product type, product subtype, and operating system name.
The second form of the add command enables you to provide the system type definitions in XML format. In the example above, the –f stmfile.xml command tells HP SIM to get the system type definitions from the file stmfile.xml. For a complete description of the required XML format, see the file /opt/mx/dtd/stmrules.dtd.
To remove system type definitions, use one of the following commands:
# mxstm –r –n product-name # mxstm –r –f stmdel.xml
The first command removes the system type with the product name product-name. The second command removes all of the system types defined in the XML file stmdel.xml.
To see a listing of existing system type definitions, use one of the following commands:
# mxstm –l [–n product-name] # mxstm –l –f stmout.xml
The first command lists all of the product names for all of the system type definitions in HP SIM. The – n product-name option displays the full definition of the product product-name, and other information such as protocol, OID data, product type, and vendor. The second command produces the full definition for every system type in HP SIM in XML format, saving the data in the file stmout.xml

[LGentile]

I have personally tried to get Cisco UCS systems (both standalone and blade chassis) to work with SIM, but they simply do not, at least not as expected.

So, yes there is a way to define new system types.  This method works very well for Dell machines and I currently have my SIM instances set up to discover Dell systems successfully which makes auto collection population very nice.

For Cisco UCS,  you can import all the MIBs (use the 2.1+ versions as the older ones do not work) successfully, however when you go to modify or view the MIBs event values in SIM you will not be able to see any of the specific events.  I believe this is likely the way the MIBs are compiled by SIM.  Modifying and manipulating MIBs is a tricky business and I am not knowledgeable enough to do this myself.  What you find is that only one of the MIBs will show anything and it is the notification of fault MIB, which has little to no value as the severity codes do not show up correctly.

There is almost no information on how to get this working from HP as they may eventually phase out SIM for OneView (probably a few years out) so do not expect new functionality for other vendors.  You likely can't open a support call on this either unless you have a support contract that includes Cisco equipment (we don't).

If you somehow get it working, please post about it.  I gave up officially as we have an EMC tool that surprising works well with UCS systems, but we are still figuring out the events/alerts for it.

[Joe Vuong]

Hi BPE,

Thanks for the input and I think I might have found the white paper. That said, it's still not quite what I am after as I am more interested in leveraging the SIM custom script capability to identify the baremetal machine/embedded management processor and associated components.

J

[Joe Vuong]

Hi LGentile,

I've managed to find and modify a PET MIB froom Intel that will translate the Cisco UCS Test Traps to something other than the unknow/undefined trap Event SIM generates.

Also with the Cicso UCS_C_Series2.0 set of MIBs, I'm able to translate the incoming Cisco UCS Notification based on the cisco-unfied-computing-fault-mib.my MIB. It still need some fine tuning though.

What caused a lot of confusion is Cisco lack of effort in this space to provide the details to their customers to get this working on SNMP enabled monitoring platforms. I only managed to do the above when I saw a statement from Cisco know error stating the customer needs to modify the PET MIB to receive and interpret certain traps. The Test trap is not created by Cisco, but use the InteL PET standard (like Dell). See the "SNMP: Symptom C200 or Nexus 1010 Hardware generates snmp traps with the following OID's" Workaround.

What I've also found is the CIMC is flakey and doens't always function (at least the SNMP sub-system) and needs resetting.

In terms of Events, there's only two (Fault raised and a fault cleared ) are generated by CIMC, but it's the body of the content or variables that provides the information of what the trap is related to. See "Cisco UCS C-Series Faults".

It's not ideal, but some progress and at least I can now forward these SIM Events to my HP BSM platform for the OpsBridge to action.

J

Edited: Updated pic