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Sun Third Party Management Integrations

April 2008

This article introduces Sun Third Party Management Integrations and covers the following topics:

• 1 Overview of Sun Third Party System Management Integrations
• 2 Why Is Sun Developing Third Party Management Integrations?
• 3 Which Sun Servers and Third Party Management Programs Are Supported?
  • 3.1 Which Sun Servers Are Supported?
  • 3.2 Which Third Party Management Programs Are Supported?
• 4 How Do the Integrations Work?
  • 4.1 What Kinds of Sun Server Events Are Monitored?
• 5 Where Do I Get More Information?

1 Overview of Sun Third Party System Management Integrations

Welcome to Sun's initiative to develop third party management integrations (hereafter called 3PMIs). This article addresses the following questions:

• Why is Sun developing third party management integrations?
• Which third party management programs are supported?
  • BMC Patrol Enterprise Manager
  • CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management
  • HP OpenView Operations for UNIX
  • HP OpenView Operations for Windows
  • HP Systems Insight Manager
  • IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console
  • IBM Tivoli Monitoring
  • IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
  • Microsoft Operations Manager 2005
• How do third party management integrations work?
• Where can I get more information about them?

We want feedback from you about what you see here and, especially, about what you would like to see! Please send your feedback to 3PMI_feedback [at] sun.com.

A PDF version of this article is also available.

2 Why Is Sun Developing Third Party Management Integrations?

Managing servers and storage in complex, heterogeneous environments is complex and expensive. Customers choosing to deploy Sun N1 System Manager, Sun Management Center, and, now, Sun xVM Ops Center or other components in the Sun software management software stack will benefit from comprehensive system and virtualization management tuned for Sun systems. However, many customers have invested in existing processes, procedures, and tools that do not allow them to leverage Sun management software at this time. To date, customers have faced additional challenges in integrating Sun servers into their data center environment, such as:

• Integration issues: Data center administrators might experience additional tasks when they attempt to integrate unfamiliar server management interfaces with their existing third party management interfaces. At a minimum, there are additional tasks, time, and cost involved in making the server and the management tool work together.

• Functionality issues: The most immediate approaches to integrating new servers with third party management programs are not necessarily the most functional, efficient, robust, or scalable. Even when data center administrators get their new Sun servers working with a third party management program, achieving a consistent level of functionality can be difficult.

• Support issues: When customers do the work to integrate a server with their existing management tool, there are no guarantees that the custom integration solution for a third party management program will work across future software and firmware updates. Every additional custom or unique integration solution increases the number of points of failure, maintenance issues, and IT management complexity.

Sun 3PMIs for Sun system hardware are a direct response to these customer challenges. They address the need to enable the rapid integration of Sun system hardware into a customer's larger data center management scheme. However, it should be noted that this strategy does not represent a departure from Sun's commitment to deliver the tools needed to effectively manage Sun products; it is a compatible and complementary extension to this commitment.

Customers can choose to use all Sun tools, all third party tools, or a combination of both in the following ways:

• At the managed server level: Regardless of whether customers choose to monitor their Sun servers through operating system agents or service processors, the same industry-standard protocols, such as SNMP, IPMI, or the use of syslog, are available generally across the Sun server product line. Sun 3PMIs generally do not require that third party, specific management agents or services be installed on managed Sun servers, nor do they preclude this option; it is a customer's choice.

• At the system management tool level: Customers can now deploy Sun servers into their heterogeneous data center management environments independent of composition.

  • Sun management tools: Sun xVM Ops Center, Sun Management Center, and Sun N1 System Manager provide a suite of end-to-end management, provisioning, virtualization management capabilities for customers who continue to leverage their investment in the Sun management software stack. These customers can continue to work in this environment without feeling that they cannot integrate their Sun servers with non-Sun systems management solutions if they choose to do so.

  • Third party tools: Customers running one or more of the management tools listed earlier can now deploy Sun servers with confidence, knowing that the integration with these tools is pre-tested, simpler to deploy, documented, and supported. Furthermore, the tools will continue to operate when Sun updates existing systems and adds new ones. Their investments in their data center management solutions and their investments in Sun servers are complementary; no tradeoffs or compromises are necessary.

Sun continues to be committed to customer choice in management and to enabling choice through open, industry-standard server management interfaces that work with both Sun's industry leading management tools and also with key third party tools that customers might have chosen to deploy.

The Sun 3PMI initiative is all about achieving alignment and consistency that customers can understand and trust. If Sun gets the management interfaces and services right (see Figure 1), Sun can deliver open, scalable, and reasonably simple solutions.

Figure 1: Management Interfaces and Services
(Click to Enlarge)

With the introduction of 3PMIs, Sun follows through on its commitments to meet and exceed customer expectations for system management solutions wherever customers are with whatever they are running.

So why is Sun developing 3PMIs? Unlike competitors that may require the use of their proprietary management tools, Sun believes in enabling customer choice when it comes to the deployment of Sun's world-class servers.

Not only does Sun offer best-of-breed Sun management tools, industry-standard server management interfaces, and service processor (SP) technology, but Sun has also taken the next step of pre-testing these interfaces with third party management tools, delivering them in usable packages, and supporting add-ons, when necessary, to make integration as simple as possible. Sun 3PMIs simplify and standardize the process of deploying Sun servers into data centers running third party management programs. As more Sun servers and more third party management programs get added to the support matrix, the costs of deploying Sun servers in these environments goes down and the demonstrated value and performance of Sun systems goes up.

3 Which Sun Servers and Third Party Management Programs Are Supported?

This section provides an overview of the Sun servers and third party management programs supported by Sun 3PMIs.

If one third party management program satisfied every customer requirement for data center management, there would not be 20-30 packages out there. The Sun 3PMI effort integrates the OS-level and SP-level management technologies in Sun servers with the various system management technologies and protocols implemented by the third party management program vendors. Sun 3PMIs adapt and integrate what Sun has to what customers expect and require. The following information explains the support matrix between Sun servers and the supported third party management programs.

Figure 2 and the Integration with Third Party System Management ISV Tools web page show the most complete and up-to-date listing of supported 3PMIs and supported servers.

Figure 2: Integration with Third Party System Management ISV Tools Web Page
(Click to Enlarge)

3.1 Which Sun Servers Are Supported?

This section provides an overview of the types of Sun servers that have been integrated with third party management programs.

To some extent, the product line names and model names for Sun servers do not provide much insight into how well they can be integrated with third party management programs. What really counts in the system management space is their support for industry-standard systems management protocols, such as SNMP and IPMI.

Next, Sun servers are categorized based on the systems management protocols and technologies they support, and then information is provided that shows how those categories of servers are supported by the third party management programs.

General Categories of Supported Servers

As shown in Table 1, all the Sun servers supported by the integration packs fall into four categories differentiated by architecture (x64 or SPARC) and by service processor type: Advanced Lights Out Manager (ALOM), Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM), or Embedded Lights Out Manager (Embedded LOM). Although Sun 3PMIs monitor these servers through SNMP, IPMI, and syslog interfaces, there are other types of management interfaces and services available in third party management programs. Sun 3PMIs attempt to simplify the process of managing the variables of supported servers, supported third party management programs, and supported management interfaces.

3PMI Support Matrix

In an ideal world, every possible combination of Sun server and 3PMI would be supported and updated continuously. Short of that, the good news is that most recent Sun servers and service processors are supported by the Sun 3PMIs.

Refer to this complete and current listing of supported Sun servers, service processors, and service processor firmware before installing the integration package. Table 2 shows the matrix of Sun server types to 3PMIs.

3.2 Which Third Party Management Programs Are Supported?

This section introduces the Sun 3PMIs. Each third party management program offers a different user interface and a different set of tools and services for monitoring Sun servers.

• BMC Patrol Enterprise Manager Version 4.4.0

  The Sun Servers Integration 2.0 for BMC PATROL Enterprise Manager provides integration between Sun x64/ILOM, SPARC/ILOM, and SPARC/ALOM servers and BMC Patrol Enterprise Manager 4.4.0. The Sun integration provides some value-adds, for example, an SNMP Heartbeat Module that periodically checks all the nodes registered with the integration. If a monitored node fails to respond, the heartbeat module generates an alert.

  Once Sun events are integrated with a third party management program, all the available tools for viewing and analyzing become available. The tools shown in the BMC Patrol Enterprise Console (Figure 3) are representative of these analytic services.

  

  Figure 3: BMC PATROL Enterprise Console
  (Click to Enlarge)

• CA Unicenter NSM Release 3.x and Release r11

  The Sun Servers Integration 2.1 for CA Unicenter NSM provides integration between Sun x64/ILOM, x64/ELOM, SPARC/ILOM, and SPARC/ALOM servers and CA Unicenter Release 3.x and Release r11. CA Unicenter NSM displays Sun-specific SNMP traps in the WorldView (WV), Management Command Center (MCC), or Enterprise Management (EM) consoles. The Sun integration also uses SNMPget to poll the names and status of server sensors and to display that information in sensor tree diagrams or topological maps.

  Figure 4 illustrates the way the 3PMI for CA Unicenter NSM polls Sun server sensors dynamically and builds a tree displaying the real-time status of each sensor.

  

  Figure 4: CA Unicenter NSM
  (Click to Enlarge)

• HP OpenView Operations 8.24 for UNIX

  The Sun Servers Integration 1.1 for HP OpenView Operations for UNIX provides integration between Sun x64/ILOM, SPARC/ILOM, and SPARC/ALOM servers and HP OpenView Operations 8.24 for UNIX. The Sun integration provides both SNMP v1 and v2c trap-based monitoring, and it reports detailed information about Sun server sensor names and event severity for environmental and component-related events.

  Figure 5 illustrates how Sun service processors and Sun servers can provide a summary picture of their overall health to a third party management program such as HP OpenView Operations for UNIX.

  

  Figure 5: HP OpenView Operations for UNIX
  (Click to Enlarge)

• HP OpenView Operations 7.5 for Windows

  The Sun Servers Integration 1.0 for HP OpenView Operations for Windows provides trap-based integration between Sun x64/ILOM, x64/ELOM, SPARC/ILOM, and SPARC/ALOM servers and HP OpenView Operations 7.5 for Windows. The Sun integration provides automatic acknowledgement of warning and error messages received from ILOM 2.0 service processors and the Solaris MASF Agent. A custom VB script provides automatic parsing of hardware sensor names from SNMP traps received from x64/ELOM servers.

  Figure 6 illustrates how multiple Sun server types are integrated with HP OpenView Operations for Windows. Events from each of these Sun server types are displayed in the Microsoft Management Console that is integrated with HP OpenView Operations for Windows.

  

  Figure 6: HP OpenView Operations for Windows
  (Click to Enlarge)

• HP Systems Insight Manager Version 5.0

  The Sun integration for HP Systems Insight Manager does not depend on any integration files that Sun ships; it is entirely a configuration procedure that customers can perform for themselves. Once configured, HP Systems Insight Manager Version 5.0 uses SNMP and WBEM to monitor Sun x64/ILOM, x64/ELOM, and SPARC/ILOM servers.

  Figure 7 illustrates how different types of Sun service processors can be monitored by HP Systems Insight Manager. Sun ILOM in particular provides robust information about sensors and indicators on both x64/ILOM and SPARC/ILOM servers.

  

  Figure 7: HP Systems Insight Manager
  (Click to Enlarge)

• IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console Version 3.9

  The Sun Servers Integration 1.1 for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console provides integration between Sun x64/ILOM, x64/ELOM, SPARC/ILOM, and SPARC/ALOM servers and IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console 3.9. The Sun integration identifies alerts by source (Sun server) and monitors the number and severity levels of those alerts. Sun-specific rules manage alerts received from multiple sources by providing automatic event clearing, event selection pruning (duplicate messages), and event severity marking (normalizing the status labels and colors for messages generated by multiple sources).

  Figure 8 illustrates the first of many levels of event details that Sun service processors can provide a third party management program such as IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console.

  

  Figure 8: IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console
  (Click to Enlarge)

• IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1

  The Sun Servers Integration 1.0 for IBM Tivoli Monitoring provides integration between Sun x64/ILOM, SPARC/ILOM, and SPARC/ALOM servers and IBM Tivoli Monitoring Version 6.1. Sun-specific rules in the Sun integration display and prioritize alerts received from multiple sources.

  Figure 9 illustrates how IBM Tivoli Monitoring can build charts full of information about Sun-specific events.

  

  Figure 9: IBM Tivoli Monitoring
  (Click to Enlarge)

• IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Version 7.2

  The Sun Servers Integration 1.0 for IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus provides integration between Sun x64/ILOM, x64/ELOM, SPARC/ILOM, and SPARC/ALOM servers and IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Version 7.2. The Sun integration identifies alerts by source (Sun server) and provides Sun-specific rules for displaying and prioritizing alerts received from multiple sources. It automatically clears problem events received from supported Sun servers and service processors when a resolution event is received.

  Figure 10 illustrates how IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus can display and categorize traps from several Sun MIBs: platform OS events, PET traps, and HW traps.

  

  Figure 10: IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus
  (Click to Enlarge)

• Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

  The Sun Servers Integration 3.1 for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 provides integration between Sun x64/ILOM and x64/ELOM servers and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. The Sun integration also provides Task Wizards to support frequently performed tasks.

  Figure 11 illustrates how the 3PMI for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005 provides information to the network topography view in Microsoft Operations Manager. Sun servers are identified, classified, and arranged appropriately. Detailed information about the model and configuration of each discovered Sun server is also available in this view.

  

  Figure 11: Microsoft Operations Manager
  (Click to Enlarge)

4 How Do the Integrations Work?

This section provides an overview of the general theory of operation for Sun 3PMIs.

No single enterprise systems management package satisfies every data center requirement in the field. That's one reason why Sun competitors such as IBM and HP have multiple offerings in this space. If IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console is not a perfect match for a data center, perhaps IBM Tivoli Monitoring or IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus will fit the bill. Although most of the third party systems management packages depend on the SNMP protocol and varieties of logfile forwarding to monitor servers, their individual implementations of those technologies can be very, very different. Although the majority of 3PMIs use events as the medium for monitoring Sun servers, there are also 3PMIs, such as the Sun integration for CA Unicenter Network and Systems Management, that poll device properties and build custom views of those results. This section focuses on the common denominators: events.

At a low level, 3PMIs must adapt to the architectures and technologies peculiar to each integration. At a high level, there is a general consistency to the way the 3PMIs move events and other messages from Sun servers into each of the third party system management packages. Table 3 and Figure 12 provide an overview of 3PMI operation.

Figure 12: How Integrations Work
(Click to Enlarge)

Subsequent sections examine in more detail how each 3PMI operates.

4.1 What Kinds of Sun Server Events Are Monitored?

This section explains the types of events that can be sent to a third party management package from Sun servers.

The ultimate source of all information that appears in the event console of a third party management package is generated by sensors and management services running on individual Sun servers. 3PMIs add value when they interpret messages from Sun servers when those messages are received by the third party management package. 3PMIs do not create additional messages.

To understand what sorts of events a 3PMI and its third party management package can monitor on Sun servers, you need to look at the three types of information generated by Sun servers and service processors. The following examples describe the most sophisticated information source, the ILOM 2.x service processor. The MASF and Embedded LOM messages are comparable.

Here are the three categories of information generated by Sun servers and forwarded through to Sun 3PMIs:

• Sensor readings: System component temperatures, current, voltage, speed, and presence. The complete list of sensors for a particular server is viewable in its ILOM graphical interface, as shown in Figure 13.

  

  Figure 13: Sensor Readings
  (Click to Enlarge)

  The detailed properties for each sensor are viewable as well. Figure 14 shows how ILOM displays detailed properties for the /SYS/MB/T_AMB temperature sensor on a Sun Fire X4200 server motherboard.

  

  Figure 14: Detailed Sensor Properties
  (Click to Enlarge)

• System indicators: Status (on, off, blinking, and so on). The complete list of system indicators for a particular server is viewable in its ILOM graphical user interface, as shown in Figure 15.

  

  Figure 15: System Indicators
  (Click to Enlarge)

• System alerts: IPMI Platform Event Traps (PETs) and SNMP traps. The rules for sending system alerts for a particular server are configurable in the ILOM graphical user interface, as shown in Figure 16.

  

  Figure 16: System Alerts
  (Click to Enlarge)

  For example, when the ILOM 2.0 service processor sends an SNMP trap with Alert ID1 to the management server at IP address 10.18.163.137, the 3PMI installed and configured on that management server interprets this raw trap for the third party management program running on that management server.

  Customers receive accurately formatted, typed, and annotated messages when they view them in the event browser of the third party management program. For example, Figure 17 shows how IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console displays events from Sun servers that have been interpreted by the Sun Server Integration for IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console.

  

  Figure 17: Events Displayed in IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console
  (Click to Enlarge)

The more robust and consistent the sensor events, indicator events, and system alerts being generated across the Sun server product line, the more accurately the third party management programs provide a picture of the status and health of Sun servers.

5 Where Do I Get More Information?

Here are additional resources for Sun 3PMIs:

• Links for downloading Sun 3PMI packages and other useful Sun system management tools

• Sun 3PMI technical documentation at http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/prod/sysmgmt.intgr#hic:

  • Sun Servers Integration 2.0 for BMC PATROL Enterprise Manager Version 4.4.0
  • Sun Servers Integration 2.1 for CA Unicenter NSM Release 3.x and Release r11
  • Sun Servers Integration 1.1 for HP OpenView Operations 8.24 for UNIX
  • Sun Servers Integration for HP OpenView Operations for Windows
  • Monitoring Sun Servers in IBM Tivoli Enterprise Console Environment
  • Monitoring Sun Servers in IBM Tivoli Monitoring Environment
  • Monitoring Sun Servers in an IBM Tivoli Netcool/OMNIbus Environment
  • Sun Servers Management Pack 3.1 for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005

• Support:

  • Register your Sun gear
  • Services
  • SunSolve Online

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