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vmproteau
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ESX and HP Management agents

VMware provides a KB with suggestions to minimize SCSI reservation conflicts when using HP Management Agents KB1004771

It essentially suggests you exclude (cmahost, cmahostd, and cmafcad) in the cma.conf file.

I've noticed once these agents are excluded, they no longer show all the same information in Insight Manager. I assume it's because of these exclusions (see before-after attachment). Product name and OS name no longer pull detailed information.

(1) Can someone tell me if this is specifically becuase I am excluding these agents?

(2) Which agent exclusion is causing this?

(3) Is this the only thing affected by excluding these agents?

I'd prefer the before but, if it's only these 2 informational display issues, I can live with it to reduce SCSI reservation conflicts but, I want to make sure there isn't something else I'm not immediately noticing.

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Texiwill
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Hello,

I have heard no mention about the SCSI reservation conflicts with these agents being addreseed with the latest patches.

Never experienced them myself.

Texiwill - regarding your response to 3 below, can you elaborate on "host monitoring tools"? The primary reason we load the HP Mangement Agents on our ESX Hosts is to monitor and alert on hardware failures with HP Inisght Manager. If disabling these agents, as suggested by VMware, prevents Inisight Manager alerts, these agents become useless.

Well you will still get notified on NIC issues and a few other but you cut out most of the notifications, but VMware has its own tools as well. cmahostd is a pretty major chunk of software but you should get other items into HPSIM. I have yet to disable cmahostd at all.

(3) Is this the only thing affected by excluding these agents? Well it does disable most host monitoring tools from HP.

I leave them enabled. I have had never had an issue and I like everything to appear in HP SIM. It gives better monitoring than VMware's tools at the moment.

Best regards,


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill

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Texiwill
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Hello,

It essentially suggests you exclude (cmahost, cmahostd, and cmafcad) in the cma.conf file.

I've noticed once these agents are excluded, they no longer show all the same information in Insight Manager. I assume it's because of these exclusions (see before-after attachment). Product name and OS name no longer pull detailed information.

(1) Can someone tell me if this is specifically becuase I am excluding these agents?

Yes

(2) Which agent exclusion is causing this?

All

(3) Is this the only thing affected by excluding these agents?

Well it does disable most host monitoring tools from HP.

I'd prefer the before but, if it's only these 2 informational display issues, I can live with it to reduce SCSI reservation conflicts but, I want to make sure there isn't something else I'm not immediately noticing.

I do not disable cmahostd but sometimes cmafcad, depending on the SAN I am using.


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
abaum
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Is this still true with the latest patches? They fixed the defunct process problem. Maybe they fixed this on too.

adam

vmproteau
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I have heard no mention about the SCSI reservation conflicts with these agents being addreseed with the latest patches.

Texiwill - regarding your response to 3 below, can you elaborate on "host monitoring tools"? The primary reason we load the HP Mangement Agents on our ESX Hosts is to monitor and alert on hardware failures with HP Inisght Manager. If disabling these agents, as suggested by VMware, prevents Inisight Manager alerts, these agents become useless.

(3) Is this the only thing affected by excluding these agents? Well it does disable most host monitoring tools from HP.

Reply
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Texiwill
Leadership
Leadership
Jump to solution

Hello,

I have heard no mention about the SCSI reservation conflicts with these agents being addreseed with the latest patches.

Never experienced them myself.

Texiwill - regarding your response to 3 below, can you elaborate on "host monitoring tools"? The primary reason we load the HP Mangement Agents on our ESX Hosts is to monitor and alert on hardware failures with HP Inisght Manager. If disabling these agents, as suggested by VMware, prevents Inisight Manager alerts, these agents become useless.

Well you will still get notified on NIC issues and a few other but you cut out most of the notifications, but VMware has its own tools as well. cmahostd is a pretty major chunk of software but you should get other items into HPSIM. I have yet to disable cmahostd at all.

(3) Is this the only thing affected by excluding these agents? Well it does disable most host monitoring tools from HP.

I leave them enabled. I have had never had an issue and I like everything to appear in HP SIM. It gives better monitoring than VMware's tools at the moment.

Best regards,


Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator
====
Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.
Blue Gears and SearchVMware Pro Blogs -- Top Virtualization Security Links -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

--
Edward L. Haletky
vExpert XIV: 2009-2023,
VMTN Community Moderator
vSphere Upgrade Saga: https://www.astroarch.com/blogs
GitHub Repo: https://github.com/Texiwill
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