Enabling SNMP on 3i 3.5 Update 1

[Smitty23]

Hey Guys,

I see there are some discussions on HP SIM and SNMP, but I just want to make sure I get answers pertaining to my situation. I believe the reason why HP SIM is not picking up details on my HP DL580 boxes is because SNMP is not enabled on ESX 3i. How can I do this through VC? I don't have a remote console created yet. This leads me to my next question. I have 5 ESX servers, all the same hardware, and they are all added to VC. Should I be adding each individual server to SIM, or should I be adding my VC box to SIM, and have it relay the SNMP alerts to SIM somehow. Sorry if this is relatively simple, just looking for some advice.

Thanks

Brent

[dmaster]

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I see there are some discussions on HP SIM and SNMP, but I just want to make sure I get answers pertaining to my situation. I believe the reason why HP SIM is not picking up details on my HP DL580 boxes is because SNMP is not enabled on ESX 3i. How can I do this through VC? I don't have a remote console created yet.

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You enable virtual snmp on the VirtualCenter Server by using a virtual machine with multiple cpu's (max 8). You should have valid SNMP licenses installed, check your license server for this.

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This leads me to my next question. I have 5 ESX servers, all the same hardware, and they are all added to VC.

Should I be adding each individual server to SIM, or should I be adding my VC box to SIM, and have it relay the SNMP alerts to SIM somehow. Sorry if this is relatively simple, just looking for some advice.

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We use HP hardware for our Physical VMware VirtualCenter Server and ESX hosts.

We have installed the latest version op HP SIM on all ESX hosts and also on the virtualcenter server, because we want to use hardware monitoring on all physical boxes.

We added all physical servers (VC2.5 Update 1and ESX 3.5 Update 1) into the central HP SIM server, wich collects all the snmp traps.

[Smitty23]

Thanks for the Info. So I'll add each ESX Server to SIM. How do I configure the trap on each ESX server to point to my HP SIM Server? Currently, I've added the ESX IP's to SIM, and they are able to ping the host, and even detect that it is a DL580, but no hardware statistics are available. Does this mean SNMP is working?

Also, Im not sure what you mean when you say you enabled SNMP by using a VM with Multi CPU's. On my VC server, I'm able to enable SNMP via the Administration Tab --> Virtual Center Management Configuration.

Thanks

[dmaster]

oh sorry about the confusion, i thought you meant SMP :smileygrin:

Here we did not enable SNMP within VirtualCenter. For this we use HP SIM client on the VirtualCenter Server. We use HP SIM only for hardware monitoring.

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When you instal HP SIM client on the ESX hosts you have to specify the ip adres of the HP SIM Server and the corresponding community strings.

After this you can add the ESX hosts to the HP SIM server. I do not know how the setup of the SNMP traps was done on the HP SIM server itselve because we don't manage the HP SIM server here.

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When je install the HP SIM client properly, it should detect it's hardware type. In your case DL580 so that's good. You should also see the hardware health stats.

[Smitty23]

Thanks. Right now I've added the IP to SIM, and it picked up the hardware model correctly, and even lists the VM's running on the system. I'm unable to view hardware/power data though. Is this some sort of MIB that I need to add to SIM?

[dmaster]

maybe this link helps..

or try to restart your HP agents on the ESX hosts

service hpasm restart

[dmaster]

just checking.. you need the latest release op HP SIM client version 8. something

[Smitty23]

Thanks for the help dmaster. Im using the latest and greatest versions of everything. btw, I dont have a service console as Im running 3i. HP SIM 8, ESX 3i 3.5 Update 1, and VC 2.5 Update 1. I think the issue is because SNMP is not enabled through my firewall through Security Profile. When I go to that page, Im not able to get into the settings for the firewall. The only thing listed there is Lockdown Mode, and Services.

[dmaster]

hmm until now we did not setup any esx 3.5i servers with HP SIM. With esx 3.5 you have to open also some firewall ports. but if you can't change them ?

is there not something mentioned in the installation guide about esx server 3.5i and firewalling/security ?

[jmenear]

Look at HP part 480872-B21. This is HP's embedded ESXi, unlicensed, on a USB stick. You can buy it for about $40. You should have a ELA but I don't know if this is verified by HP, your reseller or VMWare.

This includes HP SIM agents.

We started our environment with ESXi 3.5 Update 1 installable (+ the latest patches) and were not happy with the HP SIM 5.2 Update 1 integration. It only gave us basic up/down alerts via ping. No hardware SNMP traps.

By switching we expect to get full SIM integration. We think it's worth the $40!

Jason

[gabi]

Jason, have you managed to get more info from HP SIM regarding embedded esxi on the usb stick ?

Thanks,

Gabriel

[dilpreet]

SNMP is not the reason why HP SIM is not detecting this box, HP SIM requires some special set up for ESXi (which is not something I have complete insight into) but I am sure HP can help you with this. For ESXi HP is not using SNMP but rather using CIM so I am certain that enabling SNMP is not what you are looking for.

[Schorschi]

The problem is the API for monitoring in ESXi (aka 3i previously) is not mature to the extent that it has the ability to reporting on all components or events. There are some real gaps that disqualify ESXi from comparible implemention to script ESX 3.5 U1 or even ESX 3.0.x. The feature set of the traditional agents is far better than the weak ESXi implementation. This topic has been discussed in various blogs and VMware has even acknowledged that ESXi needs some significant work to be enterprise class ready. One can only hope that ESXi 4.x will live up to reasonable expectations, meaning scripted build feature set for monitoring will be identical on ESXi 4.x. If not? Well frankly, VMware will have another horrible joke on their hands, at least from an enterprise class perspective. This is not to say that ESXi as a concept does not have potential, it does, but until it can be managed and monitored, as good as, a scripted ESX implementation, why would any one risk using ESXi compared to scripted implementation. In point of fact, the big push from HP, Dell, and IBM for ESXi fizzled to a trickle, compared to what it should have been, when it became clear that ESXi has some real gaps in management and monitoring.

[THParker]

For ESXi, you don't use SNMP to communicate with SIM, rather CIM is used. You need to set up WBEM in the Global Protocol Settings in SIM with a username/password combo that is an administrator on your ESXi boxes. Then you should manually rediscover your boxes and you will see lots of information, except of course for some really important stuff. For instance, as it stands now, you can't see disk drive status so if one of your drives fails, you don't know. Also, you can't see network link status. So all in all you get a lot less info than you get with ESX full version but still some useful stuff.

Hope this helps. I practically pulled my hair out trying to get this info which should be documented in plain site on HP's site but doesn't appear to be.

[Schorschi]

VMware is going to have to re-tool ESXi 4.x, in the sense that, monitoring must be as robust and detailed in ESXi as full ESX scripted installation, and ESXi must integrate to existing monitoring frameworks with minimum effort, including not use IBM Director, HP SIM, or Dell ITA, but Tivoli Enterprise, CA Uniceter (cough), and other similar enterprise scale monitoring. Failure to do this, will effectively, doom ESXi to client segments that are not as demanding. VMware must take an enterprise client perspective, and not think like a small entity. True, VMware has done well to listen to the smaller clients, but ignoring the needs of large scale customers, and not having a multiple channels, addressing different size customers is not good. Maybe Greene departing is reflective of a change in heart at VMware? Don't know, but it makes for interesting conversation at the VMware virtual water cooler?

[jmenear]

My recommendation for alerts such as disk (that you don't see through ESXi once you have WBEM setup and talking to HP SIM) is to test using the ILO to generate traps. I'm not sure if every trap will generate from ILO, though I know it does for server power and up/down. A workaround? Yes, but effective.

Jason

[THParker]

Nice workaround. In theory that should work. I will have to test that and repost if it works.

[THParker]

Well that didn't work. If you remove a disk drive, the ILO doesn't detect it and it doesn't go into the IML log, so hopefully HP and VMWare will improve this stuff for some future release.

[Smitty23]

Thanks for all the insight guys. The reason why I'm skeptical to put the root login into WBEM is because I had some ill-effects when we did this the first time, leading me to believe I had to do it through SNMP. Basically what happened was I added my ESX servers into SIM, and it picked them up fine. I put the credentials in for each of my 5 ESX hosts, and SIM was able to read the data off it, and even pull info about the VM's. When I came in the following day, 2 of my hosts were showing as offline in VC. All my VM's continued running, but I had no management of the ESX Servers. After some work with VMWare, it was determined my hostd process was crashing. VMWare still hasnt been able to give me a resolution or reason why my boxes went offline. The only thing that we did discover was we were running SIM 5.1, which doesnt isnt supported. Anyways, we've now upgraded to 5.2 with the proper updates, and we'll be testing out again. Oh, I should mention. I have 3 ESX boxes in one cluster, used for Server OS's, and the other 2 are for VDI. I only have VM's running on the 3, and nothing on the VDI ones yet. Anyways, all 3 of my hosts were going off repeatedly, and the only thing that changed was adding the servers to SIM. I rebuilt all boxes, and they have been performing perfectly again.

[dilpreet]

Can you provide more details on which systems you are running and which version of SIM (I was under the assumption that you would need a particular update of it)? Also add if you have patched the system since recieving it from HP.