One of the big reasons you spend big money on server-quality hardware is to get cool stuff to make administration easier. Each hardware vendor provides their own software tools – Dell includes OpenManage, IBM includes Director, and HP includes their System Management Homepage.
How to Use HP System Management Homepage. Just you have to do install WBEM after installing HP System Management Homepage/ HP software. Once WBEM is installed, The System Management Homepage will work fine. So installing the WBEM and then the Insight Management Agent and configuring the Event Notifier that comes with it might. HP Insight Management WBEM Providers for Windows Server x64 Editions, a software developed by Hewlett-Packard, often gets into your computer via Webpage browse or some freeware’s installation.
To illustrate how it works without violating anybody’s NDAs, I picked up a used HP DL380 off eBay to use as a demo. When you remote desktop into your HP server, you’ll see HP System Management Homepage on the desktop. Launch it, and it’ll ask for your authentication information.
Before WBEM Configuration You may also get a popup warning saying something like: A timeout occurred while loading data for the HP System Management Homepage which may result in missing or incomplete information. Please ensure that the various agents configuration is correct. One common error is around setting SNMP community strings and havin gat least one read/write string specified. For additional information on how to discover which components may be causing the timeout, see the HP System Management Homepage log and the HP System Management Homepage User Guide Troubleshooting Section. That’s technically true – but if you’re dealing with a system that’s never been configured before, and your sysadmins aren’t actively using HP SMH for inventory and management, don’t bother with SNMP.
There’s an easier way to fetch hardware data from Windows agents – WBEM. Click Settings at the top, and under “Select SMH Data Source”, click Select. Failed drive symptoms in the array details In the left, in the Physical Drives list, the red X over one of the drives shows me which one has failed.
The Logical Drive is the RAID array, and it’s in a degraded state because it’s in the process of rebuilding. During a rebuild, I can expect slower storage performance, but my server won’t go down altogether. Later, my sysadmin (okay, actually there’s just one of us here) can pull the failed drive and replace it with a good one.
I won’t get another rebuild at that point – that newly inserted drive can just become my new hot spare, depending on my settings. HP System Management Homepage isn’t the only place to see storage problems.
When the HP drivers are installed correctly, you’ll also see it in the Windows event logs. HP cache settings If you’re really serious about performance, and you’ve got time before you go live with a server, you can do benchmark testing to determine the right cache settings for your database server’s data files, log files, and TempDB files. For example, if you know your log files are 100% write (except for the log backups), maybe it makes sense to use 100% write cache on those. Getting Alert Emails When Things Break We can’t be going into HP SMH all the time just to check on things – ain’t nobody got time for that. Sysadmins can also install HP Event Notifier, which works in combination with the drivers to send us emails when something goes wrong.
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Check your start menu to see if it’s already been installed. Events I absolutely love this because it catches all kinds of things that regular OS & application alerts can’t. For example, one fine summer Sunday in South Florida, our data center air conditioners struggled to keep up with demand.
I received email alerts from my servers saying that their RAID controllers were too hot – and within 15 minutes, the first air conditioner failed outright, followed shortly thereafter by the second (supposedly redundant) AC unit. Those early warnings from the RAID controller temps gave us extra time to get into the office, and every little bit helps.
(Especially when you have to shut down hundreds of servers and shared storage devices.) Managing Firmware and Software with the Version Control Repository Manager VCRM is like Windows Update for your hardware. If your System Management Homepage has Version Control on the front page, click on it, and you’ll see something like this. VCRM with a Working Repository Now, I’ve got both Installed Version and Latest Version. When an update comes out, I’ll see it here, and I can simply check boxes and install the updates. Your servers probably aren’t going to have that – but that’s okay!
That’s an advanced power tool. Accessing Your Servers Remotely Via the HP iLO HP’s Integrated Lights Out (iLO) gives you access to the server’s keyboard, mouse, and monitor remotely over the network. You can get the iLO IP address from your sysadmin or from System Management Homepage.
Then go to that IP address with your browser. HP iLO Dashboard The “Server Power” button does just what you think it does: you can either do a momentary press, or a press-and-hold to force the server to restart. However, before you do that, you should probably take a look at the console to make sure you’re rebooting the right server (or double-check to see that it’s actually frozen). Click on the Remote Console tab, and you can actually take control of the server. It’s just like standing in front of the server in the rack. You can even click the Virtual Media tab to map local CDs to the server just as if they were plugged into the server.
This is great for emergency diagnostics, but not so great for installing software – it’s much slower than using a network share. Not all iLO features are available by default – some advanced stuff like remote console while the server’s up require advanced licensing packs. But who cares? You don’t really need that part – you can get an amazing start with the rest of the features I’ve mentioned. Did I Mention This Stuff is Free?
When you buy and install a new server from HP, Dell, or IBM, they all include an insane amount of really cool management tools. They’re installed by default, but if you decide to pave & reinstall everything, make sure you get these goodies and install them. They help you dig into your hardware’s capabilities, see how much free space your motherboard has for additional memory, learn how your storage cache is configured, and more. Knowing this stuff makes you a better systems administrator and database administrator.
I had trouble with this today – found this link here to Insight Management Agent. The HP server and Service Pack did not install this software. Once I installed this – the event notifier was installed with it.
Once SNMP has been installed and the insight management agent has been installed – select to run as administrator the Event Notifier Configuration Wizard and configure as required. Note – to get System Management homepage working ensure you have the WBEM Provider software installed also (comes on HP driver page for your server). You might see HP Insight Agentless Management software referenced. You can use this to monitor the health of the HP server via the iLO page instead of System Mgmt Home page to save on use of server resources however if you want the iLO to alert you, you have to buy a license – so installing the WBEM and then the Insight Management Agent and configuring the Event Notifier that comes with it might be your best bet. Here are the correct steps to get SMH working properly: (as of August 2017) 1. Install “SNMP service” first on the OS (may not be needed if using WBEM instead of SNMP) 2.
Install this iLO driver (WBEM provider won’t install until you do this): Channel interface driver: cp029394.exe iLO 3/4 Management Controller Driver Package: cp029429.exe 3. Install “Insight management agents” Insight management WBEM providers: cp031735 3. Install SMH: cp031476.exe 4. Disable IE’s ESC (for admins only). Double click the icon on the desktop of the server – “HPE System Management Homepage” Done.