No SMH on ESX - how do I tell what is wrong?

[NJK-Work]

We are upgrading to ESX 3.5 and decided to finally put on the HP Management agents on the server (we were concerned about stability problems in the past). However, team that builds ESX does not want to put the SMH on ESX - only the agents.

So I added one of the ESX servers to SIM and it detects it OK, but is showing a YELLOW warning indicator for the server. But without the SMH, I can't tell what is wrong. Is there any other way to see what the problem is with using the SMH?

Nelson

[David Claypool · Accepted solution]

No, the SMH is the user interface for the agents.

[NJK-Work]

:(
Thanks
Nelson

[Rob Buxton]

Interesting approach to the builds.
The agents plus SMH are all installed from a single install script.
This configures snmp and opens a couple of holes in the ESX fiewall.
I've not had any issues with the HP Agents.

In another post you talk about VMM, that's another set of agents to install on the ESX host. I've seen more posts about the possible impact of VMM agents than I have about the HP Agents.

[NJK-Work]

Yeah - actually I was wrong. I assumed the SHM was not installed because I could not get to it from the SIM link for that device. But I later found I out I could manually get to the SMH using 2381. So it was all a false alarm.

I would be nice, though, if SIM could link to it like it can with Windows servers.

Nelson

[David Claypool]

Nelson, HP SIM isn't detecting the SMH because the install for the agents isn't opening up the 2301 port. Use esxconfig-firewall to open it up and re-identify.

[NJK-Work]

Confused....

If the ESX firewall is blocking 2381, how come I can manually connect to that port and view the SMH? It's only in SIM that it is not detecting it?

Thanks
Nelson

[NJK-Work]

This is what I get:

Starting identification process...
Checking for known running web servers.
Checking for System Management Home Page and other HP web agents.
The System Management Homepage is not supported on this system.
Checking for WBEM support on system.
...

Nelson

[Rob Buxton]

If you do an esxcfg-firewall --query you should see something like the following at the bottom.
Opened ports:
HPSIM : port 2301 tcp.in
sim-cert : port 280 tcp.out
hpim : port 2381 tcp.in

By default you will not see port 2301 opened, but there's a problem with discovery where it needs that port opened, you need to do that manually.
The HP Agent install opens ports 2381 and 280 in the ESX Firewall - that's why the browser works. It's the identification process that needs 2301 open.

[NJK-Work]

Gotcha. I remember this now from a long time ago that it starts on 2301 and switches over to 2381.

Nelson

[NJK-Work]

The SMH is required (and included by default) on ESX hosts in order to view problems with them. Make sure ports 2381 and 2301 are opened on the ESX firewall.