Monitored Nodes

Administration > Setup and Maintenance > Monitored Nodes

Alternatively, click Monitored Nodes.

Each root folder in the Node Views browser corresponds to one of the following filtering methods:

• Predefined Node Filters. To apply a predefined node filter, click to expand Predefined Node Filters and select the desired filter.

  • All Nodes. Displays all nodes, regardless of the application that monitors them.

  • Monitored Nodes. Displays the nodes that are monitored by OM.

    Note If you set the Monitored by attribute manually to OM, the node will be displayed.
    Node CIs from other OMi or BSM systems that have been synchronized to this OMi instance (having the Monitored by attribute set to OM) are also listed.

  • Nodes with Operations Agent. Displays the nodes that have a related Operations Agent CI in the RTSM. Nodes that are managed by a different OMi or BSM server are listed if they are related to an Operations Agent CI by composition.
  • Unmonitored Nodes. Displays the nodes that do not have a value in the Monitored by attribute.

• Custom Node Filters. You can create a filter yourself if the nodes you want to single out have a common attribute that can be used as a selection criterion. The following attributes can be used as criteria for custom node filters:

  • Primary DNS Name (or a substring thereof)

  • IP Address (or a substring thereof)

  • Routing Domain (or a substring thereof)

  • Monitored By (only an exact string; wildcard characters are not allowed)

  • Operating System (or a substring thereof)

  • Operations Agent Version (or a substring thereof)

  • View the node is contained in.

  To apply a custom node filter, click to expand Custom Node Filters and select the desired filter.

• Node Groups. Node groups are sets of manually selected nodes. The nodes in a node group do not need to have anything in common. To group nodes together, create the group and then select a number of nodes and add them to the group. Node groups also function as filters by narrowing down the list to members of the group.

  Note OM node groups are mapped to the CIs using topology synchronization packages.

  To list all nodes in a node group, click to expand Node Group and select the desired group.

  Note Node groups are modeled in the RTSM as CIs of type CI Collection with the attribute monitored_by set to OM.

  To perform operations on node groups, use the opr-agt or the opr-jobs command-line interfaces. For more information, see opr-agt Command-Line Interface and opr-jobs Command-Line Interface.

OMi uses DNS lookup to resolve a node's hostname to its IP addresses. When you enter the fully qualified DNS hostname of the node in the Primary DNS Name field and then click the list of IP Addresses, DNS lookup starts automatically. When all IP addresses are resolved, OMi enters them in the list of IP addresses.

To manually refresh the list of IP addresses, click in the Primary DNS Name field and then click the list of IP Addresses. OMi starts DNS lookup again and updates the list of IP addresses if required. If any IP addresses associated with the node are not shown in the IP Addresses list, you can enter them manually.

To communicate with a node (for example, to deploy configuration or for monitoring), OMi uses the node's primary DNS name. This name by default takes priority over any IP addresses entered for the node.

The only way to override the primary DNS name is by setting an IP address in the application_ip attribute of the respective hp_operations_agent CI in the RTSM.

OMi tries to contact the node using the following CI attributes in this order:

1. application_ip from hp_operations_agent CI

2. primary_dns_name from host CI

3. authorative_dns_name from ip_address CI

4. If authorative_dns_name in ip_address CI empty: ip_address from ip_address CI

1. Select the root folder Custom Node Filters or one of its subfolders in the Node Views browser.

2. Click  New Item. The Create New Custom Node Filter dialog opens.

3. Enter a unique Display Name for the new filter. Optionally, you can enter a Description for the filter.

4. Enable the filter criteria to be matched and enter an appropriate value for each selected criterion:

   1. Select the check box in front of the criterion. The input field is activated.
   2. Enter or select the value to be matched in the input field.

   If the value to be matched is a string, the following considerations apply:

   • The matching process is case-sensitive.
   • Using an asterisk (*) as a wildcard causes the specified value to be interpreted as a substring. Specifying 192.* in the IP Address field, for example, returns all nodes with an IP address starting with 192. if the filter is active.
   • You cannot use the asterisk (*) wildcard in the Monitored by field.

1. Select the root folder Node Groups or one of its subfolders in the Node Views browser.

2. Click  New Item. The Create New Node Groups dialog opens.

3. Enter the Display Name for the new node group and a Description, if required.

4. Select the Parent Group. You are not limited to having the group selected in the Node Views browser as a parent group:

   • You can select any existing node group by expanding the tree structure and selecting the desired parent group.
   • If you want to create a node group without a parent, select Node Groups. The new node group is placed on the highest level in the Node Group category.

   You can move the group in the tree structure by selecting a different Parent Group or remove the node's parent group by selecting Node Group as the Parent Group.

1. Make sure a node filter (from any of the filter categories) is selected in the Node Views browser.

2. Click New Node in the toolbar of the list of monitored nodes and select the type of node that you want to add to the RTSM (for example, Computer. If no suitable predefined node type is available, select Generic Node. The Create New Monitored Nodes dialog opens.

3. Enter the new node's Primary DNS Name. This is the fully qualified DNS hostname of the node, which also determines the name of the node as shown in the nodes list as well as topology views.

   After entering the primary DNS name, click the list of IP addresses to start DNS lookup. The system uses DNS lookup to resolve all IP addresses associated with the specified DNS name, and enters them in the list of IP addresses.

   Note You can also enter an IP address as Primary DNS Name (either in the dotted decimal or the decimal format). In this case, the node IP address is automatically added to the IP Addresses list. If the IP address is entered in the decimal format, it is automatically converted to the dotted decimal IP address.

4. If any IP addresses associated with the node are not shown in the IP Addresses list, you can enter them manually:

   1. Click  New Item. The Create New IP Address dialog box opens.

   2. Type the IP address of the node.

   3. Optional. Select DHCP to indicate that the IP address is assigned to the node by a DHCP server and may therefore have a short lifetime.

   4. Optional. Type the routing domain for the IP address, or $(DefaultDomain) if the default domain is used.

      The routing domain is a continuous region of an IP network within which routing is possible without any intervening Network Address Translation (NAT) devices. The RTSM uses the routing domain to determine the reconciliation rules and workflows that are applied to a network range.

      The literal $DefaultDomain should be used if the routing domain is unknown, unspecified, or known to be the default domain.

5. Optional. Enter the Operating System, Processor Architecture and a Description for the node.

   Tip Always specify the operating system when creating a node manually. If the operating system is not specified, you could face the following issues:

   • The assignment of templates with specific operating system fails and generates an error.
   • Management templates and aspects for which an operating system is defined are not listed as items that can be assigned to the node.

1. Select one or more nodes from the list of monitored nodes and click Add to Node Group. The Add Node to a Node Group dialog opens.

2. Select the node group to which you want to add the selected nodes as the Parent Group.

To delete a node from a node group, select the nodes you want to remove and click Remove from Node Group. The selected nodes are removed from the selected node group.

Select one or more nodes from the list of monitored nodes and click Re-deploy Monitoring Configuration. The window opens stating that the deployment jobs have been created to redeploy all assigned management templates, aspects, and policy templates (including the associated instrumentation) to the selected nodes.

You can check the status of the deployment tasks in the Deployment Jobs page (see Deployment Jobs for more information).

Select one or more nodes in the list of monitored nodes and click Deploy not yet Deployed Monitoring Configuration. The window opens stating that the deployment jobs have been created to deploy all assigned management templates, aspects, policy templates, and the associated instrumentation that are not yet deployed to the selected nodes.

You can check the status of the deployment tasks in the Deployment Jobs page (see Deployment Jobs for more information).

Select a node in the list of monitored nodes and click List Assignments for Selected Item in the toolbar. The window opens displaying a list of all existing assignments for the selected node.

Select a node in the list of monitored nodes and click Generate Node Report in the toolbar.

The preconfigured Node Configuration Report is displayed that compares the monitoring configuration of a selected node to the actual state. The report includes detailed information about the related aspects and templates, such as version, and state.

Error conditions are identified by the Error symbol. Hovering over it displays details about the error.

You can use  Expand and  Collapse to expand or collapse the assigned CI information.

1. Select one or more nodes in the list of monitored nodes and click Launch Tool in the toolbar. The Run Tool wizard opens.

2. Select the tool you want to launch in the Select Tool page.

   Tip Enter the tool name or part of the tool name in the Search field to reduce the list of displayed tools.

   If the tool does not require additional information, you can launch the tool directly from the Select Tool page by clicking the Run Tool button.

   If the tool requires any additional information, for example to resolve parameters, click Next and type the required information in the Specify Parameters page.

3. To run the selected tool, click Run Tool in the Preview page.

   For scripts and executable commands, the Execution Result page opens and displays the output of the tool execution.

   For URL launches, the target is opened in a browser.

   Additional options in the Execution Result page include:

   • Click the Stop Tool button to stop the execution of the tool. All processes initiated by the tool are stopped.

   • Use the Rerun Tool button to run the tool again if the first execution failed, did not yield the desired results, or was stopped.

   • Click the Word Wrap button to make sure that all output text is displayed within the output pane.

   • If the Execution Result page contains multiple execution results, you can sort and filter the results for better handling. To sort the results, click the Hostname or Status columns. To filter the results by status, click the status link to the right of the status icon.

4. Optional. Copy the execution results to the clipboard for further investigation or archiving. The results are deleted once the Run Tool wizard is closed.

   For scripts and executable commands, after the tool is run, click Close.

If OMi is not be able to generate a report for one or more selected nodes, the following error messages may appear in the report. To troubleshoot the problem, attempt one of the possible solutions below the error message.

Hostname of node is not resolvable

Possible Causes:

• Incorrect DNS configuration.
• Incorrect or incompatible node IP address.

Possible Solutions:

• Make sure the node name corresponds to the Primary DNS Name of the corresponding node CI.

• Use the nslookup command-line tool to check the IP address of the node. If nslookup fails, contact our DNS administrator.

Connection to node could not be established

Possible Causes:

• A required agent process is not running.

• A certificate is missing.

• The firewall configuration is incorrect.

Possible Solutions:

Run the following command on the OMi server:

bbcutil -ping <node hostname>

The command should return the following message:

status=eServiceOK.

If the command returns status eServiceOK, the problem no longer exists, and you can attempt to run the report again.

If the command returns a status other than eServiceOK, take one of the following actions to resolve the problem:

• status=eHostUnavailable: The node is not running or the node name cannot be resolved. Start the node, make sure it can access the network, and make sure the network is not experiencing problems.

• status=eCBUnavailable: A required agent processes is not running on the node. Access the operating system on the node and make sure the agent is running by the following command:

  ovc

  • If the command is not found, the agent may not be installed.

  • If ovc returns "ovcd is not yet started" or if it shows that some processes have stopped, run the following command to call to restart all required agent processes:

    ovc -start

• status=eServiceError: Required certificates are missing. Check the certificates on the node and make sure they are installed and correct. For more information on the required certificates, see the agent documentation.

If all actions fail, make sure there is no firewall blocking communication between the OMi server and the node.

Not authorized to list installed policies on node

Possible Causes:

• Incorrect server hostname or server core ID.
• Internal error accessing policies.

Possible Solutions:

Make sure the node is configured with the correct server and the correct server core ID by running the following command on the node:

ovconfget sec.core.auth

The command output will be similar to the following:

MANAGER=<server hostname>
MANAGER_ID=<server core ID>

Inspect the value of MANAGER:

1. If MANAGER is different from the OMi server hostname, the node is probably managed by an OM management server. In case the node is to be monitored by OMi, refer to Connect existing Operations Agent installations

   When nodes previously managed by Operations Manager are to be switched to OMi it is recommended to first set up a MoM environment, controlled by OM. In this way both servers can access the node, before in a second step the node is brought under OMi control.

   • Change the server managing the node to the OMi server.

   • Create a Flexible Management policy template that contains the OMi server as secondary manager.

   • To find out if a Flexible Management policy template is installed on the system:

     1. Run the following command on the node:

        ovpolicy -l -poltype mgrconf -level 2

     2. Open the following file:

        <OvDataDir>/datafiles/policies/mgrconf/<policy id>_data

        Find the section defining the secondary managers, which looks like the following example:

        SECONDARYMANAGER
NODE IP <server IP address> "<server hostname>" ID "<server core ID>"

        This section must contain a line where the values <server IP address>, <server hostname> and <server core ID> are configured with values corresponding to the OMi server.

2. If MANAGER is set to the OMi server hostname, run the command ovcoreid -ovrg server on the OMi server and compare the output with the value of MANAGER_ID. If the values do not match, change the MANAGER_ID on the node by running the following command on the node:

   ovconfchg -ns sec.core.auth -set MANAGER_ID <server core ID>

   using the OMi server core ID as the value for parameter <server core ID>.

Hostname or IP Address of HPE Operations Agent Changed unexpectedly in the RTSM

Possible Causes:

It can happen that the agent side discovery procedure which by default runs once a day delivers hostnames or IP addresses to the RTSM that cause problems afterward when trying to connect the node from server side. As a consequence this node CI is no longer addressable and configurations cannot be deployed or redeployed.

Possible Solutions:

Define your own hostname or IP address for contacting the agent and create a custom communication path using the RTSM Administration User Interfaces:

• Go to RTSM user interface IT Universe Manager

• Go to Search CIs tab

• In the CI Type field, select CI Type Operations Agent (Configuration Item > Running Software > Agent > Operations Agent)

• In the CI Name field, enter the hostname of the node the agent resides on (or the core id, if the agent was not added at least 24 hours before the search)

• In the Related CIs panel, right click the CI icon and select Properties

  The Configuration Item Properties page opens.

• Update the Application IP attribute with your hostname

• Click OK

From now on OMi contacts the agent with the address provided in the Application IP attribute.