HP Systems Insight Manager 5.3 Technical Reference Guide

names, templates, and/or hosts files field when creating or editing a discovery task. See “Creating a
new discovery task” for creating a new discovery task and see “Editing a discovery task” for more information
about editing a task.
After you create the XML file import it into HP SIM before running discovery using the following CLI command:
mxnodesecurity -a -f <path-to-xml-file>
HP recommends limiting the WBEM user name and password pairs to 10 to reduce the overall discovery
run time.
Related procedure
▲ Setting global protocols
Related topics
• Protocols
• WMI Mapper Proxy
• Protocol functionality
Global protocols
Managing a network is complex, and network management becomes even more complicated without
standards. When an organization purchases multiple management tools, each with a different method of
managing a particular hardware or software product, it must maintain and train network administrators in
different tools. This process is both expensive and inefficient. To address this issue, standards committees
have developed protocols for network management.
HP SIM uses many different management protocol standards. This capability enables HP SIM to provide
management support for a wide array of manageable devices.
SNMP
The IETF, the standards-rating body for the worldwide Internet, has defined a management protocol, SNMP ,
which has accumulated a major share of the market and has the support of over 20,000 different products.
SNMP has its roots in the Internet community. The complexity of large international TCP/IP networks has
provided the necessary incentive to develop a standard method of managing devices on the network.
Within the SNMP framework, manageable network devices (routers, bridges, servers, and so on) contain a
software component called a management agent. The agent monitors the various subsystems of the network
element and stores this information in a MIB . The agents enable the device to generate traps, which can be
sent to a trap destination server that is running HP SIM. Conceptually, the MIB is a database that can be
written to and read by a management application using the SNMP protocol. The following MIB types include:
• Internet Management MIBs. These MIBs include MIB-II, RMON, and others and represent the core
objects that are common across the widest range of network devices implementing the Internet protocols.
Examples of these objects include network protocols such as TCP/IP and network systems such as
Ethernet network interfaces.
• Vendor MIBs. These MIBs represent objects that are unique to an individual vendor's product or
product line. Over 500 vendors and organizations have created their own vendor MIBs. HP was the
first personal computer company to develop a MIB-enabled SNMP management of system hardware.
SNMP supports both read and write (GET and SET) commands on attributes. Some vendors do not support
the SET command because of the potential to allow an unauthorized person to alter critical parameters on
a network element. HP SIM primarily only uses the SNMP GET command.
SNMP is associated with TCP/IP and used for monitoring systems on Ethernet networks because of its long
association with the Internet.
Since its inception, SNMP itself has undergone several updates, including SNMP V2c and SNMP V3. HP
SIM supports the original V1-compliant agents and the compilation of V1 and V2 MIBs. SNMP uses UDP
port 161 for monitoring systems, while traps are received on port 162.
If your CMS is an HP-UX or Linux system, HP SIM might need to co-exist with other applications using port
162. Use the following procedure to assign HP SIM to use a different port.
578 Administering systems and events