HP Systems Insight Manager - Manual (Page 16)

Basic concepts
Discovery and identification
HP SIM can automatically discover and identify systems attached to the network using information
from management protocols such as
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP, SNMPv3),
Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI), WBEM, Secure Shell (SSH), Secure Sockets Layer
(SSL), HTTP/HTTPs, and WS-MAN. Create discovery tasks to limit discovery to specific network
segments or IP address ranges, or to control the frequency that each task runs. Use discovery filters
to prevent discovery of unwanted system types.
NOTE: HP SIM uses several management protocols to communicate to managed systems. The
protocols used, include WBEM/WMI, SNMP, SNMPv3, HTTP/HTTPS, SSH and WS-MAN. All of
these protocols can be configured to access data from non-root/non-administrator users. For Linux
systems, one of the protocols used during discovery, is SSH. During discovery, HP SIM executes
the command, /usr/sbin/dmidecode, on the remote Linux system to fetch certain information.
Since this command requires super user privileges, HP SIM needs the root credentials. Therefore,
to discover a Linux system using SSH protocol, be sure root credentials are entered as part discovery,
system or global credentials
Inventory
Data collection gathers data that can be used for reporting and to populate various fields in the
user interface. HP SIM collects various information such as system type and sub-type, supported
protocols, and available memory. You can choose to maintain only the most recent data, enabling
you to run reports or compare different systems using Snapshot Comparison. Or, you can store all
data collected over time, which enables use of Snapshot Comparison to view trends on a single
system.
Status info
The following status icons are used in the status list columns to show status on different aspects of
the managed systems. For example, the MP column displays the status icon of the management
processor if the system has a management processor board installed.
Table 1 Status types
Status type Status icon
Critical
Major
Minor
Warning
Normal
Disabled
Unknown
Informational
Reports
HP SIM performs comprehensive system data collection and enables you to quickly produce detailed
inventory reports for managed systems. Reports can be generated in Hyper Text Markup Language
(HTML), XML, or Comma Separated Value (CSV) format. Enhanced reports can be automatically
16 Product overview