Setting up Managed Systems in ICE-Linux without the ProLiant Service Pack

4
online and registered their willingness to provide service with the master agent. The subagents extend
the branches of the tree and provide additional information.
ProLiant Support Pack
The ProLiant Support Pack is an optional collection of agents and drivers that HP provides for
installation after a GNU/Linux operating system is installed. Usually, they cannot be installed without
a fully-functioning copy of a GNU/Linux operating system because of certain prerequisites embedded
in the PSP installation tool.
The agents provided by the PSP enhance or increase the features that are normally supported by the
native GNU/Linux operating system SNMP package. Technically, they are called subagents or peers
of the central communications agent daemon snmpd. The SNMP agent, snmpd, is fully capable of
providing service itself; however, the additional PSP subagents provide additional services.
Agentless Installations
An agentless installation is an installation of a GNU/Linux operating system on an HP ProLiant system
without the PSP agents. Normally such a system would be classified as an unmanaged server because
the system does not contain an SNMP agent with the PSP subagents required for managed server
status. However, it is possible to install the GNU/Linux operating system’s default SNMP agent and
configure it to serve a minimal set of additional OIDs sufficient to become classified as a managed
server. This status is required to run specific tools against the node from the HP SIM web interface.
The SNMP agent can be configured during the post-install phase of an initial installation or at any
time after installation. An unmanaged node can be manually elevated to managed status by running
Options→Identify Systems… on a node whose SNMP agent has been reconfigured for agentless
service.
A node that is initially installed as an agentless node can have the ProLiant Support Pack installed
later and the two services (one provided by the SNMP master daemon for agentless and another
provided by the PSP agents) will blend seamlessly. The attempt by the PSP subagents to reregister to
provide service for the same OIDs already served by the SNMP master agent will be silently
discarded.
Advantages of Agentless Installations
An agentless install offers the best performance for the least amount of effort and offers the most
freedom to configure the system. Other than ensuring the SNMP service port inbound 161 is open
and the SNMP trap service port outbound 162 is open through a firewall, there is little risk of a
system’s various security methods obstructing the trap notification, discovery, and data collection
procedures.
In addition, the agentless install does not require the PSP for the hardware platform or the operating
system. This can be valuable on hardware platforms, like a Workstation blade which might not yet be
certified for PSP support. In addition, it is also valuable for operating systems which are, and are
unlikely to be supported by a ProLiant Support Package; examples are Debian, Ubuntu®, Fedora™,
or openSUSE®.
It is conceivable that there may be a performance benefit to not using the PSP agents on heavily-
loaded systems. Normally, MAC information is served by the SNMP master agent daemon snmpd.