Monitor HP servers running ESX without an HP SIM Server

[serenitynow98]

I think I know the answer to this question but I need to ask it anyway...

Is there a way to monitor "hardware" (NICS, disk drives, array etc.) specific alerts on HP servers without using an HP SIM Server?

[Jae_Ellers]

You can use any system capable of monitoring SNMP. You will need to load the HP agents to show hardware issues.

You can also use the HP agents which will generate a System Management Health webpage at https://:2381. If all agents are installed and properly configured you can see system properties and their health. This will show predictive failures on disk, among other things.

VC will issue email alerts if properly configured, but doesn't know anything about the hardware.

I'm working thru setting up SIM now. Is there some reason you wouldn't want to use SIM?

[VirtualNoitall]

You would also need to add/compile the MIBs into the SNMP management station that you use instead. These are already available in SIM so is an extra step required.

If this is an enterprise\company requirement you could use SIM yourself and then pass on alerts to a higher level manager. I am not sure why you would not want to use SIM though. Lots of good functionality there.

[serenitynow98]

We currently use Sitescope to monitor our wintel servers.

This is the first time we will be using it to monitor a "linux" system.

I have already loaded the 7.7.0 agents and can get to the system management homepage just fine.

The problem I am having is trying to configure sitescope to get these "hardware" alerts. Dont know how to do it or where to start.

Dont know how to do this and HP and Mercury Interactive's support has been pretty much clueless.

[VirtualNoitall]

Hello,

This rang a bell for me so I took a look back and we have had a similar conversation here: http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=661445&#661445

It sounded like things were on track?

Is sitescope able to compile and/or import MIBS?

Did you setup the SIM agents to point to your sitescope server with the proper FQDN and community name?

[serenitynow98]

I thought so to virtual.

Sitescope apparently has 4 MIBs built in specifically for vmware.

This is well and good.

But what i want is the hardware specific alerts which none of these provide.

So the question i think is when we install the 7.7.0 agents does it also install hardware related MIBs?

If it does then where does it install it?

Maybe if I can find those I can ty and compile them on the sitescoep server and perhaps get it to work that way...

[VirtualNoitall]

OK, this is uncharted territory for me but it looks like you have a couple of options:

1) setup SIM and forward alerts to sitescope

2) import MIBS into sitescope

1 is certainly the easiest and would be my preferred options.

To do 2 you could install SIM somewhere ( you will discard it later ) and pull the mibs out from \Program Files\HP\Systems Insight Manager\mibs. You will then have to import them into sitescope. You will also need to keep these up to date as they change so I am not sure how you would go about that. in this scenario. It would be a little work. For SIM you can simply install a newer version of SIM or get the latest updates from the hp site.

Everything is a little easier if you treat SIM as a mid level manager and have it report relevent alerts to your higher level manager sitescope.

[Jae_Ellers]

http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/locate/7843.html here are the latest mib updates. You need to install HP SIM and then run a wsh script to update the mibs to get the latest set.

[serenitynow98]

Isn't SIM a licensed product that we have to pay for?

Management are not going to be up for that considering we already have a monitoring application in place.

[VirtualNoitall]

Right, if he doesn`t use SIM though that script probably doesn`t work. As I said above though he has that option with SIM.

[VirtualNoitall]

No, not at all. For some of the more advanced features yes but for basic hardware level monitoring you are covered.

[Jae_Ellers]

Sim is free for the basic monitoring.

When you install the agent the MIBs are installed. I don't remember the location off the top of my head, but I seem to remember things getting installed in /opt and/or /usr. Once installed man hpasm or look at the install readme. Both are extensive.