Integrating Dell PowerEdge Servers into an Environment Managed by Insight Manager
Dell™ OpenManage™
Systems Management
Dell White Paper
By Roger Foreman
March 2003
Contents
Introduction
Test Configuration
Loading and Configuring Server Administrator
What SNMP configuration should I use?
Using Dell Server Assistant to load the OS and SNMP
SNMP Configuration after OS installation
Loading Server Administrator
Testing
Selecting and Loading the Dell MIBs
Typographical Conventions
Upload the MIBs
Register the MIBs
Device Type Manager
Tailoring and Final Testing for Events
Final Testing
Results
Limitations and Caveats:
Appendix A – Dell MIBS
Essential Server MIBS
Network Interface Adapters
Other Adapters, Devices, and Software
Legacy MIBS
Figures
Figure 1: Architecture of the Tested Environment
Figure 2: Setting Security and Trap Destinations
Figure 3: Customizing the Server Administrator Installation
Figure 4: Server Administrator Options
Figure 5: Testing the PowerEdge Server with SNMPWALK
Figure 6: go-dell.asp
March 2003Page 1Dell Enterprise Product Group
Section 1
Introduction
In response to the pressure for increased productivity of system administrators, server vendors have responded with management tools. Dell’s offering is the Dell™ OpenManage™ suite of products. While these products cover software deployment, hardware configuration, asset management, remote support, and system health monitoring, this paper is focused on monitoring system health on a collection of servers.
To do this, OpenManage Server Administrator is loaded on every Dell PowerEdge™ server to be managed, and one instance of OpenManage IT Assistant is installed and configured for monitoring all the PowerEdge servers. Errors detected by Server Administrator are then forwarded via Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to IT Assistant, where they are logged and can generate email and paging notifications.
Since a Hewlett-Packard Insight Manager™ 7 environment has the same architecture, it is possible to integrate Dell PowerEdge servers by taking advantage of the industry standard interfaces of SNMP and Hypertext Transport Protocol – Secure (HTTPS) in Server Administrator. The advantage would be for administrators to continue to use their existing notification processes while fully benefiting from the use of Server Administrator on Dell servers.
This paper details the specific steps needed to add a Dell PowerEdge 1650 server running Microsoft® Windows® 2000 server to an environment currently being managed by Insight Manager 7. To add a server running NetWare® or Linux®, the Insight Manager 7 and OpenManage Server Administrator configuration would be the same, with the primary difference being how SNMP is configured at each managed PowerEdge server.
At a high level, and ordered for ease of troubleshooting, the steps are:
- Load and configure the OpenManage Server Administrator on the Dell server so it can communicate with Insight Manager 7
- Load Dell MIBS into Insight Manager 7 so it can properly communicate with Server Administrator
- Configure Insight Manager 7 to recognize Dell servers
- Map the Dell Traps into alert actions and perform an end-to-end test.
Section 2
Test Configuration
The scenario that was tested was a Hewlett-Packard DL580 running Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) database and Insight Manager 7 SP1 installed and configured as the management console. To this was added a Dell PowerEdge 1650 Server running Microsoft Windows 2000 Server with the latest OpenManage Server Administrator (version 1.3) as the managed system.
Figure 1: Architecture of the Tested Environment
Section 3
Loading and Configuring Server Administrator
The first step is to properly load and configure the Dell server as the managed system to talk to Insight Manager 7. If the operating system (OS) has not yet been loaded, then the easiest process is to use the Dell Server Assistant CD to load both Microsoft Windows and SNMP. If the OS was already loaded, then only SNMP needs to be loaded and configured. Once SNMP is configured, the OpenManage Server Administrator can be installed.
What SNMP configuration should I use?
The default SNMP community name is public, but using that could allow a rogue management station to access your servers. The SNMP community name is like a password both Insight Manager 7 and Server Administrator need to communicate. To enhance security, access can be Read Only. This prohibits using SNMP to make changes to the server, such as changing threshold settings or shutting it down, but allows Server Administrator to send alerts to a console when status changes. With a Dell PowerEdge Server, users will not lose functionality during this process. It is possible that other systems need SNMP set to Read Write, so be sure the total environment is well understood.
If the intent were for Insight Manager 7 and IT Assistant to coexist in the network to provide the full OpenManage capabilities, then it would be necessary to configure the Dell PowerEdge server with Read Write SNMP permissions. Note that Dell secures Read Write operations using SNMP only to come from Dell OpenManage IT Assistant.
SNMP trap destinations also need to be specified. These are the hostnames or IP addresses of one or more systems that are to receive notification of events.
For this paper, the community name of showcase with Read Only rights was used with a single trap destination to compaq2 running Insight Manager 7. These settings need to be made on each Dell server added to the environment.
Using Dell Server Assistant to load the OS and SNMP
There are three CDs that ship with every Dell PowerEdge server – the Dell OpenManage Server Assistant CD, the Dell OpenManage Systems Management CD, and the Product Documentation CD. The Server Assistant CD is bootable and is used to perform a complete installation from local media. It can also be used with a running system and brings up a menu for access to drivers and BIOS/FW update diskettes.
The PowerEdge 1650 in the configuration tested for this paper was booted from the Server Assistant CD and the menus were followed until the screen titled “Enter Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Configuration Information” was reached. On that screen, it was necessary to scroll down past “Select Optional Components” to enter the SNMP information. The default is Enable SNMP, but it is also necessary to enter a Community Name and Trap Destination and change the Accepted Community Names from “public:Read_Only” to “showcase:Read_Only”. The rest of the defaults should be left unchanged.
At the very bottom of the screen, past the NIC configuration, the Install Dell OpenManage Server Administrator box is checked by default. Uncheck it to allow explicit setting of the appropriate options instead of taking the Express Options. These are described later in the Loading Server Administrator section. If missed, just select Cancel when prompted for the System Management CD after the system reboots and continue with the section below: Loading Server Administrator.
SNMP Configuration after OS installation
If the Server Assistant CD has not been used to load the OS and configure SNMP, then the following steps should be performed. The first is to ensure that the SNMP component is installed. After selecting the “Add/Remove Windows Components” in the left hand of the Add/Remove Programs dialog box of the Control Panel, the Windows Components are displayed. Highlighting “Management and Monitoring Tools” and then selecting “Details”brings up the option to check Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP).
After the SNMP service is installed, its parameters can be set by right clicking on the SNMP service in Service Manager to open the Properties panel. Here the community name of showcase and trap destination of compaq2 can be set in the security and traps tabs. These are shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Setting Security and Trap Destinations
Loading Server Administrator
Server Administrator is distributed on the Dell OpenManage Systems Management CD. Documentation is available online at or on the Product Documentation CD. Note that the CD is Version 3.3, denoting the release of all of the OpenManage software, and the version of Server Administrator is 1.3 on that CD.
Although manually loading Server Administrator on a single server is covered in this paper, it is possible to completely script and automate the install. For more information see
After inserting the Systems Management CD it will AUTORUN. The user input is as follows:
- “Install… Systems Management Software”
- “Acknowledge” the Dell Software License Agreement
- “Install Managed System” after which there is a wait while “Preparing the wizard”
- “Custom Setup”
- The default destination is OK so select “Next”
This leads to the Managed System Software page, which can be followed for the actual configuration.
Figure 3: Customizing the Server Administrator Installation
- Select “Settings” on Other Management Agents, uncheck Adaptec CIO, then select “OK” as this function is now handled by the Storage Management code.
- Remote Access and Diagnostic Service should be checked – if not, look at “More Info” for suggestions. Diagnostic Service can be left off for a smaller footprint, but might need to be re-loaded later for problem determination.
- Storage Management – If the box is not checked, then select “More Info,” which will tell why. A common message here is “FW out of date.” The FW level needed is on the Server Assistant CD at the same level. Once Server Administrator is installed, it can be used to update firmware, but at this point a boot diskette is needed. For this test, version 1.72 or later of the RAID controller firmware was necessary.
- Select Settings on OpenManage Server Administrator. This is where the user’s root password is set to something other than the default.
Selspassword was used for this paper.
Figure 4: Server Administrator Options
Since Insight Manager 7 does not use the Common Information Model (CIM), the option to Install CIM can be unchecked to close a potential security opening. The final step is to allow the installation process to restart the server. During this, the process also saves InstallSummary.htm, unattend.txt and DOMSA_SETUP.txt files in C:\ for reference.
Volume Capacity Monitoring was also enabled on the PowerEdge 1650 so that free disk space warning and error events would be sent to Insight Manager 7 when 90% and 98% thresholds were reached on the C: drive. It was deemed that the notification was worth the additional overhead of having this service running. This was done by:
- Start -> Programs -> Dell OpenManage Applications -> Array Manager -> Array Manager Utilities
- Check Volume Capacity Monitoring then Apply and Close
Testing
After the reboot, Server Administrator was checked to see that it was operating correctly. This was done in the following steps:
- Login to the server as Administrator or other account with administrator membership
- Launch Server Administrator from the desktop icon or
- Login as Administrator or other account with administrator membership
- Select Main System Chassis in the left hand navigation
- The status icons should all be green checks to indicate an error free status
Then to check and clear storage errors:
- Start -> programs -> Dell OpenManage Applications -> Array Manager -> Array Manager Console
- Select the Error tab
- Right click to clear errors
At this point, everything should be working correctly on the Dell system. A further check would be to use snmpwalk, which is part of Win32tools available at As shown in Figure 5: Testing the PowerEdge Server with SNMPWALK, the command saves all available SNMP information available via community string showcase on system 192.168.30.4 to the file dellserver.txt. Providing that DNS or WINS is properly configured for the new Dell Server system, its name can be used instead of the IP address.
Figure 5: Testing the PowerEdge Server with SNMPWALK
When opening dellserver.txt with Notepad, there should be entries with 10892 in the OID that were returned from Server Administrator. Specifically, 1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10892.1.300.10.1.9.1 will contain the model of the server. Running this from the Insight Manager 7 system tests the following: network connectivity, that the community string is correct, and that Server Administrator is providing the expected information.
Section 4
Selecting and Loading the Dell MIBs
The MIB files are located in the directory \support\dcpemibs on the Systems Management CD and are well documented in the included README. The two essential MIBS are:
- 10892, which provides 36 traps from the server motherboard such as: system type, voltages, temps, etc. It is the primary MIB for PowerEdge systems. Detailed information can be found at
- Arymgr, which provides 80 server related traps from the RAID and SCSI subsystem. Detailed information can be found at
The remaining MIBS were not loaded for this paper, as they either did not provide any event traps, or their event traps were from adapters not present in the test environment. A description of all the MIBS and their use is documented in Appendix A.
The 10892 MIB registered without error, but the arymgr MIB encountered the “WARNING” severity type that was not recognized by Insight Manager 7. Editing arymgr.mib with Notepad, these TRAP-TYPEs were mapped to supported types as follows:
- Perc2SmartFPTExceeded = MAJOR
- EnclosureGenericDegraded = MAJOR
- AlertPausedCheckConsistency = MINOR
- AlertResumedCheckConsistency = INFORMATIONAL
.
Typographical Conventions
For clarity of navigation, the following conventions are used:
Underscore will be used to indicate an HTML hot link, hot spot, or button within an applet
Large Fontwill indicate the title of a dialog box or applet
Upload the MIBs
Uploading the MIB makes a copy of the file in
c:\Program Files\Compaq\Compaq Insight Manager 7\Compaq\Protocol\SNMP\MIBS
which is subsequently used by Insight Manager 7. Both the Essential MIBs and any applicable optional MIBS need to be uploaded with the following procedure:
Select the Tools Icon in upper left
Expand SNMP Extensions in the left hand navigation panel
Select SNMP MIB Upload
On the Upload MIB panel, select Browse
To load from the Dell System Management CD
- Look in Compact Disc, Support then dcpemibs folders
Double click the MIB file, such as 10892.mib
In Rename To: enter a new name with the .mib extension, or leave blank for the same name
Click on the Upload button
Wait for “successfully uploaded” message
Repeat for each MIB needed. For this paper, arymgr.mib was also uploaded
Register the MIBs
Registering MIBs to Insight Manager 7 is the process that maps the SNMP information received from the Dell server to numbers and character strings that can then be used for identification and notification messages. Both the Essential MIBs were registered as follows:
Select Tools Icon in upper left
In the left hand navigation pane, expand SNMP Extensions then select MIB Registration
Scroll down and select 10892.mib in the Unregistered MIBS
Check Create Logfile, Use Edit file, and Create
Select <Register
This took over two minutes and only returns a message if there is an error. Errors are logged in:
\Program Files\Compaq\Compaq Insight Manager 7\log\10892.txt.
A typical error might be missing a pre-requisite file such as DMTF-DMI or failing to register intel.mib prior to intelnic.mib. Although the version of arymgr.mib from OpenManage 3.2 registered without error, the one included with version 3.3 required editing via Notepad to change the WARNING severity to one that is recognized by Insight Manager 7. The resulting SEVERITY levels were:
- Perc2SmartFPTExceeded = MAJOR
- EnclosureGenericDegraded = MAJOR
- AlertPausedCheckConsistency = MINOR
- AlertResumedCheckConsistency = INFORMATIONAL
Finally, by selecting create editfile for each MIB registered, a .REV file is created that is customized later in Section 6.
Section 5
Device Type Manager
Devices are discovered and added to the Insight Manager 7 database by its Device Type Manager when a new system is detected via a ping sweep or when receiving a SNMP Trap. The Device Type Manager then does a sequence of queries to the new device to determine its identity. The default configuration includes definitions for all the HP devices and even the Dell devices that use the older Desktop Management Interface (DMI), such as an OptiPlex™ desktop running the OpenManage Client Instrumentation (OMCI) version 6.1. Because Server Administrator only supports SNMP, the steps below configure it to look for specific information in the Dell MIBS to tell that the device found is a PowerEdge server. This only needs to be done once, as all Dell servers running Server Administrator appear the same way within Insight Manager 7.
The steps used to configure the Device Type Manager to recognize a Dell Server are:
Login to Insight Manager 7 with an account having Administrator Access
Select the Tools icon on the upper left of the Home page
From the Device Type pull down in Device Category Information locate and choose Server
Ignore Product Name and select New (SNMP)
Fill in “Dell Server” or another name of your choice for Product Name
Select Get to the right of System Object Identifier
On the subsequent Get Device Response to this OID screen, enter the correct community name and IP address of the server previously configured in the Target IP. In this case it was showcase and 192.168.30.12. If this fails, refer to the Testing heading in Section 3.
Select Get Value, then Apply to return to Add New SNMP Category
In the URL Launch box enter “YourIm7Host/go-dell.asp?dst=$ipaddress”. YourIm7Host is the name or IP address of the server running Insight Manager 7. This will be explained in the next step.
On the “MIB Variable OID:” line select Get