HP Systems Insight Manager - Manual (Page 144)

C Protocols used by Systems Insight Manager
Systems Insight Manager uses many different management protocol standards. This capability enables
Systems Insight Manager to provide management support for a wide array of manageable systems.
SNMP
The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), the standards-rating body for the worldwide Internet, has defined
a management protocol, SNMP , which has accumulated a major share of the market and has the support
of over 20,000 different products. SNMP has its roots in the Internet community. The complexity of large
international TCP/IP networks has provided the necessary incentive to develop a standard method of managing
devices on the network.
Within the SNMP framework, manageable network systems (routers, bridges, servers, and so on) contain
a software component called a
management agent . The agent monitors the various subsystems of the network
element and stores this information in a MIB . The agents enable the device to generate traps, which can be
sent to a trap destination server that is running Systems Insight Manager. Conceptually, the MIB is a database
that can be written to and read by a management application using the SNMP protocol. The following MIB
types include:
•
Internet Management MIBs. These MIBs include MIB-II, RMON, and others and represent the core
objects that are common across the widest range of network devices implementing the Internet protocols.
Examples of these objects include network protocols such as TCP/IP and network systems such as
Ethernet network interfaces.
•
Vendor MIBs. These MIBs represent objects that are unique to an individual vendor's product or
product line. Over 500 vendors and organizations have created their own vendor MIBs. HP was the
first personal computer company to develop a MIB-enabled SNMP management of system hardware.
SNMP supports both read and write (GET and SET) commands on attributes. Some vendors do not support
the SET command because of the potential to allow an unauthorized person to alter critical parameters on
a network element. Systems Insight Manager primarily only uses the SNMP GET command.
SNMP is associated with TCP/IP and used for monitoring systems on Ethernet networks because of its long
association with the Internet.
Since its inception, SNMP itself has undergone several updates, including SNMP V2c and SNMP V3. Systems
Insight Manager supports the original V1-compliant agents and the compilation of V1 and V2 MIBs. SNMP
uses UDP port 161 for monitoring systems, while traps are received on port 162.
If your CMS is an HP-UX or Linux system, Systems Insight Manager might need to co-exist with other
applications using port 162. Use the following procedure to assign Systems Insight Manager to use a different
port.
Procedure C-1 Assigning Systems Insight Manager to use a different port
1. Open the globalsettings.props file located at
/etc/opt/mx/config/globalsettings.props.
2. Locate the SnmpTrapPortAddress property: SnmpTrapPortAddress=162 .
3. Modify this property by changing the port value to a different port number.
4. Restart Systems Insight Manager.
NOTE: Systems Insight Manager does not receive traps from the application using port 162 unless the
application is configured to forward traps to the port assigned to Systems Insight Manager.
NOTE: If the SnmpTrapPortAddress entry is deleted, Systems Insight Manager defaults to port 162.
Systems Insight Manager attempts SNMP communications based on the number of SNMP retries you specify
and only stops when the communication is successful or the number of retries is exceeded. Systems Insight
Manager also waits for SNMP responses between retries based on the timeout period. Finally, Systems
Insight Manager can communicate only through SNMP when the community string specified on the system
and the community string specified for that system in Systems Insight Manager match. The community string,
"public," is a commonly used default. However, you can specify any community string needed for your
security requirements.
NOTE: Community strings on the managed system and the Systems Insight Manager community strings for
the system must match to manage the system through SNMP. Some SNMP management agents also provide
SNMP 144