Version Status in HP SIM incorrecly displayed

[Joel McIntyre]

We've had HP SIM set up for a while, but never looked into getting the Version Control agents working. The agent is installed as part of our typical system build, but we had never set it up through SIM. So I set up a repository on the SIM server and uploaded the most recent PSP's to it. After that, I set up a task to re-configure the version control agent for the group 'All Servers.' This worked fine on about 60% of the servers. On some servers, however, the status on the homepage of HPSIM shows as a blue question mark, but if you click on the link, it will take you to the Version Control page for that server, which shows correctly. The only place it's not showing up correctly is on the HP SIM homepage, but we're trying to use this to see at a glance which of our servers are out of date. If we have to click on each one individually, it defeats the purpose. I've tried updating the Version control agent on a few of the affected servers to 6.0.0.840 with no difference. The Version Control Repository is at version 6.0.0.840. I am also going to try and update the Insight agents and the System Homepage on some of the affected systems after hours, but if that doesn't work, I'm out of ideas. Anybody else run into this issue? Thanks.

Stats on the SIM server:

Operating system: Windows 2003
Version: Systems Insight Manager 5.3 with SP1 - Windows
Build version: C.05.03.01.00
Build date: 2009-03-28 21:04
Patches:
HOTFIX53_003.jar
HOTFIX53_004.jar
HOTFIX53_005.jar
HOTFIX53_006.jar
HOTFIX53_007.jar
HOTFIX53_008.jar

[David Claypool]

Run the software status update task.

[Joel McIntyre]

This seems to have worked for some servers and broken the link for other servers. Overall, I have about the same amount of blue question marks, but now they're for different servers. I'll try and update the Version Control Agent on those servers as well. Are there other dependencies to getting the Version Control Agent working? Do I also need to be updating the System Management homepage, and the Insight Agents as well?

Thanks.

[David Claypool]

You can use the 'Manage Communications' tool to advise on any communication / authentication problems with the devices and to take corrective action. The Software Status Update task uses the Secure Task Execution capability of HP SIM and requires a security trust relationship to work--you can be getting HW status just fine through SNMP without this, so that might be working and this is not...

[Joel McIntyre]

The "Manage Communications" seems to have the same issue with the Version Control Agent not reporting correctly. On a server that I know has been configured with a repository, and I can look at if I remote into the server and locally open up the Version Control Agent, it shows up as not configured. At this point, it seems like manually updating the Insight Agents, System Homepage, and Version Control Agent is the only thing that works well, and even that seems to fail some of the time.

[Rob Buxton]

As DC mentioned, getting the SNMP and Trust relationships up and steady helps.
There's certainly an issue with older VCAs where the SW polling task would corrupt the VCA cache and leave the VCA inoperable.
Update the entire PSP to the latest version and then top up with the updated VCA. Adding updated individual components to older PSP's can have unpredictable results.
Also, try disabling the Daily Identification task. I've sometimes found that can cause issues.

[Joel McIntyre]

I have disabled the daily identification task, thanks for the heads up. I now have the unenviable task of going through the 60 or so servers and updating them to see if they'll report correctly in HPSIM. Hopefully just a one-time task, thanks for the help all.

Joel

[Kevin Talbot]

I have the same annoying problem. It's not an older VCA problem either, the oldest VC agent we use is 7.90. Even the newer 8.xx agents are not reporting their status. I am also having timeouts when I try to load the SMH or VCA web page. I have certs configured correctly, trusted mgmt server, vc repository, user and password all conf'd correctly. In fact I can go in and configure a VC agent and SMH perfectly, exit and run the software status and it STILL reports as unknown. There is something else going on here. It may be a windows patch changed the way the app communicates on the network enough that it adds delay and so the polling job never hears back from the managed system. Can you guys look into this?