VCRM is very poor

[Derek_31]

I'm totally unimpressed with the VCRM and Agents that come with PSP 7.00. For instance, with VCRM it downloads everthing known to man from HP and puts 100s of packages in the directory. I want to be able to specify:

Server Models, Operating system, and language that I want to get downloads for.

I have to manually go through and clean out all the crap it downloads. A royal pain.

I'm also unimpressed with how uninformative the VC agent is. I pushed out the two January network driver updates, but I can't see anywhere that I tell in SIM what machines do or don't have the update. They aren't listed on the VCA page.

The VCA page also tends to show duplicate items, or items with no version numbers.

Their version of version control is very far from useful in the enterprise. Am I the only one that wants accurate data across the enterprise?

[Doug Wogan]

You should be able to tell if your software is up to date on your servers on the home page of the IM7 console. It's the column called "SW". If their is a green check mark then the version on your server matches what's most current in your VC data base.

I think if you want you can download each update one at a time for each server and OS you have. Why would you want to do that if the PSP contains all of them? How many different servers are you managing? Personally I like that I only have one download to worry about.

[Derek_31]

The VCRM does not show a yellow software status when HP released the new NIC drivers. So I have zero idea of what computers do or do not have the NIC updates without manually looking at each computer.

I also don't want a bazillion firmware images for servers I don't have, nor languages I'll never need, or operating systems that I don't have.

HP's approach seems to be 'flood the user with everything' and let them manually delete the junk they don't want.

PSPs aren't an issue with me...I don't care if they have drivers for hardware I don't have. But all of the non-PSP packages that are for hardware, OSes, and lanugages that I don't have drives me up the wall, trying to keep the repository clean.

[Colin Weaver]

In the Version Control Agent for each server, you specify a Support Paq revision to compare against which means if a new support Paq comes out you have to go back round the servers and change the reference support paq. This will make the icons go yellow (after the Scheduled software status task has run anyway). This appears to have not changed much from CIM7 to Systems Insight

[Derek_31]

I get the yellow icon when a new PSP comes out, but not when driver updates, such as the January 2004 NIC updates. The yellow icon also appears to work for some BIOS updates.

[Rob Buxton]

When the Auto download feature was released many in the IM 7 forum noted that it downloaded more than they wanted. Much like the Active Update did. Based on that I never implemented it but took a more manual approach.

Create a directory structure that has subdirectories for the softpaqs and then separate areas for additional drivers etc.

Download what you need.
Subscribe to the Advisories from HP.

This way you know when appropriate material is available and can download it as required.

Also, you can choose not to validate against a softpaq, at this point the VCA then gives an overall indication based on available software rather than the reference paq.
This would pick up the NIC update you noted.

Yes, some components do not have version numbers in the software available columns, I believe this is due to the fact they're sub-components of a product.

I don't see double entries on any Servers running the latest Agents.

All this for free, if you want a better Product Management System then you'll need to look at the market. If only being able to manage the MS software / patches was this easy and free!