Quick beginner question

[getrdone]

Can someone please clarify a question for me? We have several Proliant servers but are just starting to implement SIM. In reading through the documentation it mentions that we need to install the Support Pack on all of our managed servers. Won't that also update all of our servers to the latest drivers, etc? Sure, eventually we'd like to be at that point, but to start we just want to set up SIM and have it inventory our servers so that it can report on hardware status, *existing* driver versions, etc. Basically we don't want to change anything on our managed servers initially. So my question is, what is the *minimum* software that needs to be installed on a managed server in order for us to do this? Thank you all

[Marc L Desjardins]

PSP 7.20 or newer "plays" best with HPSIM 5.x
PSP 7.90 is the most recent.

[Neysters, Lutz]

If you don't want to install the whole ProLiant Suport Pack (PSP) including new drivers, you will have to individually install:
- HP system management homepage
- HP insight management agents
- HP version control agent
This is the minimum I keep up to date even if a critical productive server doesn't have downtime available.

For communication reasons you should install and configure snmp first on the managed servers, of course. As soon as communication is established this way you can use "Deploy Drivers, Firmware and Agents" in SIM to do the installation.

[getrdone]

Thank you Lutz,

If we set up SNMP first, and use the Deploy Drivers, Firmware, agents, am I then able to just pick and choose the Homepage, management agents, and VCA? I seem to be only able to deploy a full SUpport Pack from the server. Do I have to install these three items manually at the server itself or can I select these three specifically and deploy them?

[Neysters, Lutz]

I can tell you step-by-step for SIM 5.0:
Choose Deploy/Deploy driver, Firmware and Agents/Install Software and Firmware.
Choose the target systems and then you can select the items you want to install from your Version Control Repository (VCRm). SMH and agents should be in
*Server*/Microsoft Windows server 2003/Software - System Management
The full PSPs should hide in
*system Software Baseline*/
Just be careful to unclick "reboot systems if necessary ...". You can do it manually if you don't succeed in restarting the HP services after installation to get them to work.

Probably somone in this forum will tell without reboot the software is not fully functional. This may be true, but if your customer doesn't like reboots at all (like mine) you can at least try this way.

[Rob Buxton]

Just my thoughts.
Separating the agents from the drivers can product unpredictable results. best practise is to install the entire PSP.

HPSIM can read the information of very old agents, until recently we had HPSIM getting information from v6.30 agents on NT4 servers.

You get more information from the newer agents but it's not essential.

I'd recommend that you put HPSIM in and get things working.
Look to update the PSP's as a full upgrade rather than try and update just the agents. I think going that route will give you as many headaches and leave you with servers that you'll still want to update at some point as HPSIM will merrily report your drivers are all out of date!

[getrdone]

Thanks all for your informative replies. I guess the thing I'm struggling with is that we have a mix of older/newer proliants which may or may not have a PSP installed. I want to be at an initial point, where if I do a discovery I will see the status of software/driver versions. I'm assuming that if I configure the servers with existing agents properly, I will no doubt see this information. What conncerns me is the servers that do not have anything installed to begin with. I do not want to install a PSP right of the bat just so I can see it show up properly in SIM. So the question is at a minimum, what do I need installed on a target server so I can determine the *initial* state of the server (ex. a) yes, I do need to install a PSP, b)yes, you already have a PSP installed, it just needs updating or c)you are up to date with all your drivers, PSPs.

Is it just SNMP that needs to be installed on the client to do a discovery? If that answer is yes, then if I do want to push out a PSP to a server without one, what mechanism/protocol is used to push something out to the target to do the install?

Thanks again all!

[Rob Buxton]

HPSIm will discover anything it can ping. You'll then get either "Unknown" - I've found a discovery protocol but still can't determine the device or "Unmanaged" - I can't see anything.
HPSIM uses DNS for name resolution, so that doesn't care much about how it discovers it.

At this point it can be monitored for up / down only.

SNMP if configured to allow the HPSIM Server access, e.g. community names and the HPSIM Server is an allowed host will allow the server to be identified. It knows its a server and what type, OS etc.

The PSP plus agents adds the detail, device failures VCA etc.