VMware ESX and SIM

[Hunt Miller_1]

Hello,
Does anyone know if VMware is supported with SIM? I found agents for IM7 but since EMC bought VMware I have seen no updates? I am a engineer for a HP reseller and we have a good customer who wants to use both and would expect support. Thanks in advance for any help.
Hunt

[David Claypool]

Note: This forum is for HP Systems Insight Manager. Postings for Insight Manager 7 should be directed to http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/categoryhome.do?categoryId=266

Instructions for installing the Insight agents for the physical host can be found by following the Solutions link to VMware off the ProLiant servers main page at http://www.hp.com/servers/proliant or directly at http://activeanswers.compaq.com/ActiveAnswers/Render/1,1027,6615-6-100-225-1,00.htm

The procedures and the agents themselves are tested out by HP Solutions Engineering and VMware themselves. Each time a new agent release comes out, they evaluate whether or not it contains important changes that will benefit them, and decides whether or not to qualify the new ones. Currently the procedures are documented and supported for the 6.4 agents, even though 7.0 are out. Expect generally every 3rd or 4th release to be qualified. It just isn't necessary to do it for every release.

Note that the agents are for the physical host only and not for any of the "guests" or virtualized servers. Since all of the hardware is virtualized, there is nothing that the Insight agents could report about anyway.

If your guest OS is one of the Windows versions, hpSIM will be able to discover it (assuming it's visible to the outside world), do basic status of it (through SNMP up/down indications) and gather some limited information from it using WMI.

[Rob Buxton]

Just a comment, the IM Agents are the same whether you're using IM 7 or SIM.

Are you looking at running HPSIM on a VMWare partitioned Server?

[James Kennedy_4]

Just to add some personal information that I'm sure is not supported by HP but works great in my environment.

Although you can't install the Proliant Support Pack on VMs, you can however install the Desktop management agents on Windows-based VMs. Configure SNMP and SIM/IM7 will be able to see some of the details of the vm server. It's even smart enough that the model comes up as VMWare in the list. You don't get a lot of detail but I've found that it atleast gives you up/down green status and it gives you memory and disk space.

[Joe Richards]

My 2 cents...
We are running HPSIM (and before that CIM7) on a VM server. I've had NO issues with either.
Also, the agents for CIM7 work in HPSIM. As a matter of fact, they work even better because HPSIM notes that it's a VM server under the product name.

[Tim McGue]

Some additional notes. VMware has released ESX 2.1. ESX 2.1 is supposed to allow support for the 7.0 agents. You can read through more details on it here:

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?threadID=3884

Also, when looking at Insight Agents you will see only one CPU have utilization. That is because of the structure of ESX utilizing only one CPU for the base Linux OS.

Also, James, thanks for the heads up about the desktop agents. I'll give that a try. It is a bit frustrating not knowing up/down status for VMs.

Tim

[David Claypool]

James and Tim:

Interesting that you chose to run the desktop agents. Be aware, though, that they have gone end of life as of last December and there will be no more updates.

I am curious what you are getting vs. what hpSIM provides via SNMP (up/down) and WMI (basic configuration information).

[James Kennedy_4]

David,

From what I can tell, I get almost no information at all from a VM server unless I have the desktop agents installed. Here's what I can get with the desktop agents installed. Apparently these are pulled from DMI.

Product Model shows as "VMWare Virtual Platform" instead of "Unknown"
OS Shows as Windows NT Server on all VMs even though they're all Windows 2000 or 2003.

I also get listings for Memory, Physical Disk Drives and Logical disk drives, something I couldn't seem to get without the agents.

I attached a sample Data collection report from the server with the agents installed.

[James Kennedy_4]

attachment

[Tim McGue]

David,

Is there a planned replacement for the desktop agent?

Tim

[David Claypool]

HP Client Manager Solution 6.0, based on Altiris Notification Server, uses a new version of the Altiris aclient. Information will be made available to hpSIM through the "Altiris Connector for hpSIM."

This is announced but not yet shipping. More info:
http://h18000.www1.hp.com/im/

[David Claypool]

James:

All of that information should be available through WMI, assuming WMI is active, the WMI mapper is in place, and the login/password is set in the global protocol or individual protocol page. If SNMP is loaded you should also get status polling of up/down status for the VM.