IMC has a predefined list of over 6,000 devices. This list maps sysOIDs to devices, so when you add a new device to IMC, it will say “this is a Cisco Catalyst 3560 Switch”, or a “HP MSM 760 Wireless Controller”, etc. Here’s a sample of what that list looks like:
(Read more...)The most interesting talk I attended at HP Discover in Las Vegas this year was Ken Gott’s talk on “Management of Software Defined Networks and Hybrid Environments with HP IMC.” This talk outlined the architecture for how HP plans to manage hybrid network environments using IMC, and gave us a quick demo of the code.
(Read more...)Timezones can be complicated things - every country has its own set of rules around how to decide what time it currently is - and those rules change, frequently. Modern Operating Systems have systems in place for handling those changes. Give it a location, it will deal with the rest. Unfortunately, network devices don’t have those systems, and we need to explicitly tell them how to work out what the current local time is, and when to change it to Daylight Savings Time. Here’s how to do that for Cisco IOS, HP ProVision, and HP Comware systems.
(Read more...)I’d just like to clear up a little confusion that people have about HP IMC templates, and how they are used. Templates can be used to define credentials for different access methods - SNMP, Telnet, SSH, WMI, PowerShell, SOAP. You can define multiple templates for each access method, and they can have a range of options - e.g. Username/Password, Username/Password + enable password, Private Key + enable password, SNMPv3-Priv-Aes128-Auth-Sha, etc.
(Read more...)Auto-discovery can help you populate your NMS, and keep it up to date. HP IMC supports several methods of adding devices - either by manually adding them, or getting IMC to automatically discover them. Here’s an overview of the options available to us:
(Read more...)HP IMC has an optional add-on module for NetFlow/sFlow Analysis called “Network Traffic Analyzer (NTA).” This comes in 10-, 20- or 50-node license packs. Based on the license names, you might think that it’s as simple as counting up the number of NetFlow-generating devices in your network, and purchasing sufficient licenses. Not quite so fast.
(Read more...)HP Operations Manager has been around a long time in the Enterprise server management space. I first started working with it around 2001, and I’ve always had a soft spot for it, but I’m ready to declare it abandoned. HP has failed to develop the product, and they now seem to be actively working on a viable alternative.
(Read more...)NNMi can use LDAP for authenticating users, with or without SSL. Recently a customer changed the SSL certificate used on their LDAP server, which broke NNMi authentication. NNMi trusts one specific certificate for verifying SSL connectivity to the LDAP server, so changing the certificate broke the chain of trust. To save me time when this comes around again, I’ve documented the steps for fixing this:
(Read more...)This is a companion post to my review of the technical differences between NNMi and IMC. That one tried to stay focused on technical matters, but this post is more opinion-based. It is intended to help potential customers decide which one is right for them. I am not going to directly compare them to the many other NMS products on the market - let’s keep this to a straight HP vs HP discussion.
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