Considerations for choosing HP Agentless Management

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Introduction
The HP iLO Management Engine includes HP Agentless Management (referred to as “Agentless Management” in this
document), the Active Health System, Intelligent Provisioning, as well as the traditional remote management and
control capabilities delivered with the new, improved iLO 4 management processor. iLO 4 and Agentless Management
are components of the HP ProActive Insight architecture
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Agentless Management, allows you to monitor core hardware and related alerts without installation of agents or
providers on the host OS.
and integrated lifecycle automation built into HP ProLiant
Gen8 servers.
Use this paper as an initial guide if you are considering Agentless Management. You will find information addressing:
• The benefits of Agentless Management
• The ease of setup and maintenance with HP Service Pack for ProLiant (SPP) and HP Intelligent Provisioning
• How to implement the service with HP iLO 4 and HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) 7
• When the best choice continues to be OS-based agents
• Where you can go for more in-depth information
Agentless Management
In a traditional agent-based solution, the agent is typically installed on the target host OS to collect hardware and OS-
specific data which is either pulled by a central management server (CMS), such as HP SIM 7, or pushed directly to the
CMS by agents using mechanisms that include SNMP traps and WBEM Indications.
With the Agentless Management solution, the management software (SNMP) operates within the iLO firmware instead
of the host OS and frees memory and processor resources on the host OS for use by server applications. The advantage
with Agentless Management is that in addition to monitoring all key internal subsystems (such as thermal, power, and
memory), iLO sends SNMP management alerts directly to HP SIM 7, even with no host OS installed. Agentless
Management not only simplifies agent management regardless of the host OS, but also provides an iLO-dedicated
management network, isolated from the regular data network. Isolating agent network traffic is not possible in a typical
agent-based solution.
The initial release of iLO 4 firmware utilizes the SNMP protocol and is compatible with HP SIM 7 and the standard SNMP
stack used in Microsoft Windows. If you, like the majority of users, run a private management network behind a firewall,
Agentless Management is the best solution because it’s compatible with your existing environment. If you want
additional security, a planned iLO 4 firmware update will provide the SNMPv3 secure protocol.
The benefits of Agentless Management include:
• An intelligent asynchronous device (iLO 4) on the physical server providing a single network target to monitor and
manage the device
• A consistent Graphic User Interface (GUI) for configuration regardless of the host OS
• A well documented and robust scripting toolkit based on industry-standard XML to deploy and configure many servers
from a single configuration point such as HP SIM and HP Insight Control. We’ve designed the HP Scripting Toolkit
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• The capability to segregate the management network from the data network using the dedicated iLO Network port for
out-of-band communication, increased security and stability
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integrate into most custom deployment and configuration environments.
• The option for the management network and the data network to be physically the same by using the “shared”
system networking port capability on all HP ProLiant servers, giving you a choice for configuration
• No requirement for you to install any software to manage communication across host LAN ports, or for you to enable
management network protocol ports on the host OS. This significantly reduces potential security threats, especially
for those platforms that may interface directly to the Internet
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To find out more about how HP ProActive Insight architecture gives you insight into your IT environment and capabilities that simplify and automate
system provisioning, troubleshooting, and software updates, go to
http://www.hp.com/go/proliantgen8
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Find more information and download the HP Scripting Toolkit for Windows and the HP Scripting Toolkit for Linux at
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/toolkit/stk/index.html