What data is available via WBEM?

[Dana Swanson]

I've read on this forum that using the WBEM protocol allows hpSIM to collect OS related data from the managed systems. If I configured the global WBEM protocol on my hpSIM CMS would I gain any additional information that I am not already getting by the SNMP and hp Management Agents? Our managed systems now are Windows NT 4.0 Server, Windows 2000 Server and Windows 2003 Server.

Would I gain anything else?

If I do get additional data is there anything documented on what additional information WBEM provides?

I have to justify turning this on with example data, security reason(s) or other misc reasons.

Thanks!

Dana

[David Claypool · Accepted solution]

If the systems are ProLiant servers with Insight agents, then no additional data becomes available. The real reason currently that you would want to use WBEM would be to gather data from non-ProLiant systems including HP 9000 and Integrity servers running HP-UX, 3rd Party servers, client systems and virtual machine guest OS instances.

[Dana Swanson]

Should I assume WBEM would only be used to collect data via WMI on systems that can't run the PSP with the hp Insight Agents? For example clones, VMWare Virtual Servers, etc.

Thanks,

Dana

[Dana Swanson]

Thanks Dave,

I'm going to try this on a VMWare host OS and see what I can collect on it.

Dana

[David Claypool]

See the chapter on HP Systems Insight Manager in the "Best Practices for VMware ESX Server 2.1.1 on HP ProLiant Servers" at http://www.hp.com/servers/activeanswers --> Infrastructure Solutions --> VMware for Consolidation and Virtualization. It gives a pretty comprehensive look at what you can do with a VMware host and its guests using HP SIM.

[Dana Swanson]

Hi Dave,

I took a look at the documents in the area you provided. The docs are great for installing the HP Insight Management Agents on the VMWare linux box and creating a VMWare guest OS.

I could not find any info on how to get hpSIM to gather data from a guest OS via WMI.

My issue has been I do a manual add device, specify the wbem user and password that has admin privs to the machine. Using domain\username as the context for username. I then start all discovery data gathering tasks and wait. Once all the tasks have ran I can see the guest OS in hpSIM but get no WMI related info on the machine. I just get system name and IP.

I made sure the two WMI related services were started on the guest OS. I tried deleting and adding the device again.

Is there anywhere in a hpSIM log I could check to see why the hpSIM server can't gather the WMI data?

Also would anyone know of a utility I could run on my pc to test the WMI connection from my PC to the server?

Also are there any docs out there that talk about this type of issue?

Does the guest OS need any extra software from hp for WMI to work with hpSIM?

Thanks!

Dana

[David Claypool]

HP SIM speaks "pure" WBEM (Common Information Model encoded in XML over HTTPS) so it uses a WMI mapper to translate into WMI's DCOM and back and forth between the CIMv2 namespace and the WMI namespace. It is possible that you did not opt to install the WMI mapper when you did the HP SIM install. Check Add/Remove Programs to find "Pegasus WMI Mapper" and the Services snap-in to make sure the service is started. Check Options --> Protocol Settings --> WMI Mapper to make sure HP SIM knows where the WMI mapper is. Finally, if your hostnames contain underscore ("_") characters, it will defeat the WMI mapper (although Windows doesn't enforce it, the underscore is disallowed under IANA standards for hostnames).

[Dana Swanson]

Hi Dave,

Thanks for the tips!

I have the Pegasus WMI Mapper 2.0 installed on the hpSIM CMS server. The Pegasus WMI Mapper Service is started. My WMI Mapper Proxy host is set to my hpSIM servers fqdn, the ip is correct and the port is set to 5989.

The target server I'm trying to monitor has 18 characters for it's name but no "_"'s in it's name. Could the name be too long? This target server also has another fqdn registered to it.

I can't be 100% sure it's an hpSIM issue. Yesterday I spent the day looking at 3rd party WMI tools but didn't find anything usefull for troubleshooting WMI connections.

After this post I'll try to connect to another server or workstation via WBEM WMI and see what happens.

Thanks!

Dana

[David Claypool]

Do a search on microsoft.com for "scriptomatic" which will write out sample VBscript to access WMI. Select something from the list and run it locally on a server to make sure that WMI is accessible and then try to run it against the same system across the network (you'll need to modify the script a little to address a remote node). The remote station must be able to automatically authenticate to the other station (share the same password or be members of the same AD domain).

Also, you can create a custom list with conditions such as

Search for [systems]

where [system type] [is] [server]
and [management protocol] [is] [WBEM]

to see which systems HP SIM has recognized as having WBEM/WMI running during the device identification task.

[Dana Swanson]

Thanks again,

I think my issue may be that the VMWare server with it's guest OSes was migrated from one town plant to another town plant.

To help with the migration someone added an additional dns entry to point to the server. I now have two dns entrys pointing to the same ip address. For example one entry is unk-servername.old.location.com and the other is servername.new.location.com. When I add this server manually using servername and ip hpSIM is picking up the unk-servername.

I think this is screwing things up authentication wise.

I found a utility called "EMCO Remote Connection Analyzer" before I saw your last post.

I ran the tool on the hpSIM CMS server and connected the tool to the VMWare test guest OS.

It came up with the following:

Video Controller WMI Not Available
System Product Info WMI Not Available
Serial Number WMI Not Available
Physical Memory Item not Available
Monitor Type WMI Not Available
Modem Name WMI Not Available
BIOS Version 08/24/00
BIOS SMBI OS Version P19
BIOS Name Default System BIOS
BIOS Manufacturer Compaq

So it was able to detect some WMI data.
Strange this is a VMWare virtual OS and it knew the manufacturer was Compaq. I would think the bios would be VM BIOS or something like that.

If anyone is interested in the utility I found its at:

http://www.emco.is/troubleshooting.html

I'm still trying to find a NON VMWare server without PSP to try the WBEM WMI detection on.

Thanks!

Dana

[David Claypool]

Something's still screwy. A VM guest should report back as having a Phoenix BIOS. The result you got back was from a physical ProLiant.

[Dana Swanson]

I'll try your scripting advice and see if the results are the same.

Thanks,

Dana

[Dana Swanson]

I just installed EMCO Remote Connection Analyzer on the VMWare guest Windows 2000 OS. This software also lets you show the local settings on your machine as well.

This came up with the type of results you mentioned:

Video Controller VMWare SVGA II
System Product Info VMWare, Inc...
Serial Number VMWare-...
Physical Memory 384 MB
Monitor Type Default Monitor
Modem Name
BIOS Version Phoenix BIOS 4.0 Release 6.0
BIOS SMBI OS Version 6.00
BIOS Name Default System BIOS
BIOS Manufacturer Phoenix Technologies LTD

So the WMI database on the target OS seems fine.

I still have the fqdn issue on the server. I'll put in a request to get this fixed and let you know if that fixed the issue.

Thanks,

Dana

[Dana Swanson]

Just a follow up. I fixed the dns issues on the VMWare servers and still don't see any WMI info via WBEM. I did use the WMI Scriptomatic from Microsoft and ran it on the hpSIM CMS server and was able to change the script pointing to the VMWare servers and valid WMI data was gathered.

I'm going to take a good look at the docs and make sure it's not something I'm doing wrong.

Dana

[David Claypool]

You gave HP SIM credentials, right? Options --> Protocols --> Global Protocols or Options --> Protocols --> System Protocols to assign it individually to your guests.

[Dana Swanson]

Hi Dave,

I figured out the issue. In global protocol settings I had WBEM turned on but no account and password listed. I did not have a account/password here because I wanted to manually add each WBEM managed server and instead of using a the global account and password I wanted to add a custom account and password. I did this because not many machines will be using WBEM/WMI as well as for security reasons.

The solution was to add the default account and password in the WBEM global settings and not use the custom account/password. It was the same account and password but for whatever reason it worked when I had it in the global list and didn't while adding a server manually.

Could this be a bug in the software?

Thanks Dave for your help. It's nice having a knowledgeable HP employee on this forum.

Dana Swanson

[James Spring_1]

Personally, I think its a bug. I had the same issue and could not get WBEM to work on individual systems by leaving the globals blank. I even tried using mxnodesecurity, but to no avail. This bug compounds with another bug where HP Sim gets the wrong product type from WMI (Product type will list as Proliant, and not Proliant 8500, for example). According to someone on this forum SIM prefers SNMP information, but this is not the case. For the life of me I cannot figure out how to just overwrite the bad WMI data. Then I wouldn't have to deal with trying to Jimmy this global protocal settings stuff. SIM, good product, terrible for inventory.

[David Claypool]

James: If you've discovered a bug please report it to customer services to get escalated and into the developers hands.