Problems with HP SIM 5

[Kristian Elvheim]

Hi, I have just installed HP SIM 5 (well, actually I installed 4.2 first, then upgraded to 5.0 without any problems). I use only proliant servers (dl360 and dl380), all servers run win2003 sp1. From the home page of HP SIM I can see all servers, I receive snmp-traps from all of them, but in the SIM homepage I don`t see the operating system information from any servers (except the csm).
Also I get an error message when I try to configure the vca on the servers to point to my csm (which is the vcrm). When I browse to each server`s local home page, I get all the information about the system.
This should mean that the agents are installed properly on the local server, but somehow they don`t communicate with the csm.
Does anybody have any suggestions for how to solve my problem ?

[Rob Buxton]

The VCA uses the VCRM.
It also uses a separate method of communication.
I've set up a new local account with Server admin privs on the VCRM Server. The VCA is then configured to use this to login and then a reference pack is selected.
Once done you can replicate this change to other Servers.

As for device recognistion, at a guess look at the SNMP settings on the client Servers. They'll need a suitable Read Only and Read Write community name. In addition check the Allowed Hosts, you need localhost plus an entry for the HPSIM Server.

[Kristian Elvheim]

Thansk for answer, I have already checked this, so that does not help me, sorry.
Regarding the vca-problem, I get the following entry in the log on the vca home page:

Entry Details
Severity Error
Task ID VCA1126732874
Date / Time 14.09.2005 23:21:14
Message The repository specified, argus, did not return a result.
Additional Data
Connection: close
Content-Length: 375
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 21:21:14 GMT
Location:
/cpqlogin.htm?RedirectUrl=/cgi-bin/vcrepository/cgi&RedirectQueryString=
Server: CompaqHTTPServer/9.9 HP System Management Homepage/2.1.2.127
Set-Cookie:
Compaq-HMMD=0001-1cf8771c-7dda-624f-802e-ccb81cc9549b-1126732874775044;
path=/
Status: 302

This does not tell me much about what is going on. Can anyone dechiffer ?

[Mark Butler_3]

One thing to check which threw us for a loop. In some cases we were seeing the SNMP service configuration (security tab) configured to not accept SNMP packets from any host, but it was set to "Accept SNMP packets from these hosts" and the table was empty since we don't specify it...thus the server was ignoring the requests from the SIM console.

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

Not sure whether this is of any information but I have noted that if the VCRM runs on a server with multiple IP adresses it seems to only bind to the first adress available, and if that adress is not the adress associated with VCRM in for example dns it the agents will not get any answer from the server, pointing the agents towards the "other" IP adress will in that case work nicely.

Just a note, as I have no idea on your server ip-config.

[Kristian Elvheim]

Thanks for reply, no I does not have multiple ip-adresses on my vcrm-server.

[Kristian Elvheim]

Just a notice: I found the error regarding the vca. It seemed that the repository was empty (allthough I had copied support-pack files to it). I had to go to the repository homepage and run a catalog (rescan. After that I could connect to the repository from the vca-agents.

[Kevin Kelling]

Not sure what issues may be at play in your environment but there are some things I have seen remedy these issues in the past:

1) make sure there are no restrictions on the security tab of the SNMP service on the managed nodes. This can prevent SIM from discovering the OS/System type.

2) make sure the HP Agents on the server support the OS. Some individuals have been appliying serivce packs without checking the PSP version. For example running 2003 SP1 with PSP 7.1 will result in the hardware not being known by the agents (and SIM).

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

I would very much like it confirmed from HP if it really is the case that you cannot use SNMP security.

I do not believe this to be the case but would consider it a flaw, if indeed SIM did not work if not "any" host was allowed SNMP traffic rather than just the SIM servers (and possibly localhost just for local access)