Managing your HP servers through firewalls with HP SIM (481364-002, February 2008)

10
Asset Management
HP SIM provides asset management services by first discovering and identifying the managed
systems, gathering data from instrumentation running on each managed system, storing this data in a
SQL database, and finally providing reporting capabilities on this gathered data. These steps require
communication between the CMS and managed system as described in the following paragraphs.
First the managed systems and the instrumentation running on them must be identified. HP SIM offers
an automatic discovery mechanism using IP ping sweep, or administrators can manually add systems
by name or address. In either case, the CMS will attempt to contact the managed system using a
ping; if this fails, then no further requests will be sent to the system.
HP SIM normally uses an ICMP echo to ping a system; however, some network administrators turn off
ICMP through firewalls. In this situation, the administrator can configure HP SIM to use a TCP port to
ping systems. Port 80 is used by default, but an alternative port may be specified in a configuration
file. The target system need not be actively listening to the chosen port, but the firewall must be
configured to allow these requests to pass.
Next, the CMS will attempt to identify a number of management protocols such as SNMP, HTTP, and
WBEM. The protocols used for asset management depend on the types of systems being managed
(Table 1):
• ProLiant servers provide management data through SNMP, giving complete coverage of the
hardware instrumentation. Integrity servers running Windows also provide this SNMP
instrumentation.
• ProLiant and Integrity servers running Microsoft Windows 2003 or 2008 also expose much data
through the Insight Providers and WMI. The HP Insight Providers include server providers
(information about processors, memory, peripheral devices, computer system information, and
sensor information); network providers (network controller information and indications); and storage
providers (storage controller information and indications). WMI on Integrity currently does not cover
detailed hardware information such as controllers, DIMMs, and physical disks.
• ProLiant and Integrity servers running Linux may also provide management data through WBEM.
While that data is not currently as rich as the SNMP information, WBEM provides basic hardware
and operating system information today. WEBM will be expanded to provide full instrumentation in
future.
• HP 9000 and Integrity servers running HP-UX provide management data with WBEM. HP
recommends WBEM for asset management and makes it available on 11.x versions of HP-UX.
(These systems also support SNMP, but SNMP is not required for asset management.)
Table 1 Protocols used for asset management of industry-standard servers
Server
OS SNMP WBEM WMI SSH WS-MAN
ProLiant Windows Y Y
1
Y
ProLiant Linux Y Y Y
HP 9000 HP-UX Y
2
Y (11.x)
HP Integrity HP-UX Y
2
Y
HP Integrity Linux Y Y Y
HP Integrity Windows Y Y
1
Y
Other devices Y Y
Notes:
1
When WMI mapper is installed