Safe and Powerful: Security in HP-UX System Management Homepage (SMH)

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Introduction
HP System Management Homepage (SMH) is the single system management solution for
managing HP-UX 11i. It is a web-based tool and uses the Apache web server. SMH is also
available for Linux, and Microsoft® Windows® systems.
The key features of SMH are its system administration capabilities and its ability to display
details of hardware attributes. The SMH solution provides an easy-to-use interface for
displaying hardware fault and status monitoring, system thresholds, diagnostics, and software
version control for an individual server by aggregating the data from HP web-based agents
and management utilities.
SMH integrates with HP Systems Insight Manager (HP SIM) the strategic platform for
multisystem management from HP. HP SIM provides multisystem management capability by
providing administrators single sign-on (SSO) access to SMH on managed servers (stand-
alone or partitioned) from a central console.
Security is a prime goal in the development of SMH. A number of security features are built
into SMH, and the system administrators too can take steps to ensure that security is
maintained during the implementation, usage, and maintenance of SMH. This paper
describes the SMH security features and, contains information and references related to the
security of SMH.
SMH key benefits
SMH offers the following benefits:
 SMH provides a common cross-platform single-system management solution for HP-UX
11i, Windows, and Linux.
 SMH is bundled with HP-UX 11i v3 Base Operating Environment, as well as the
Foundation Operating Environment on HP-UX 11i v1, v2, and earlier versions of v3. The
user does not need to make any configuration changes to start using the application.
 SMH uses operating system-based Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and host-based
authentication to protect web-based system management tools. The tool provides a
secure, encrypted connection between the web browser and the host system.
 SMH uses open standards such as WBEM-based property pages for operating system,
software, and hardware information.
 SMH is tightly integrated with HP SIM. This offers several advantages:
• Gives users the ability to manage multiple systems from a single console, HP
SIM.
• Enables users to determine which aspects of their HP-UX system and software
might require corrective action.
• Enables users to view entities requiring attention, and drill down to subsequent
levels of detail until the precise situation and corrective action is determined.
• Eliminates ‘tool roulette’ by providing a guided path to the tool from which
appropriate action can be taken.
 SMH provides system management capabilities through plug-in applications. The user
can add custom system management applications in to SMH.