IBM Tivoli Storage Manager, Version 7.1

Logging events to an SNMP manager

IBM® Tivoli® Storage Manager supports the simple network management protocol (SNMP) together with event logging.

About this task

You can do the following:

Set up an SNMP heartbeat monitor to regularly check that the Tivoli Storage Manager server is running.
Send messages known as traps to an SNMP manager, such as NetView® or Tivoli Enterprise Console®.
Run Tivoli Storage Manager scripts and retrieve output and return codes. See Tivoli Storage Manager server scripts for details.

Tivoli Storage Manager also implements an SNMP subagent that can be configured to report exception conditions and provide support for a management information base (MIB). The management information base (MIB), which is shipped with Tivoli Storage Manager, defines the variables that will run server scripts and return the server scripts' results. You must register SNMPADMIN, the administrative client the server runs these scripts under. Although a password is not required for the subagent to communicate with the server and run scripts, a password should be defined for SNMPADMIN to prevent access to the server from unauthorized users. An SNMP password (community name) is required, however, to access the SNMP agent, which forwards the request to the subagent.

Note: Because the SNMP environment has weak security, you should consider not granting SNMPADMIN any administrative authority. This restricts SNMPADMIN to issuing only Tivoli Storage Manager queries.

SNMP SET requests are accepted for the name and input variables associated with the script names stored in the MIB by the SNMP subagent. This allows a script to be processed by running a GET request for the ibmAdsm1ReturnValue and ibmAdsm2ReturnValue variables. A GETNEXT request will not cause the script to run. Instead, the results of the previous script processed will be retrieved. When an entire table row is retrieved, the GETNEXT request is used. When an individual variable is retrieved, the GET request is used.

Here is a typical Tivoli Storage Manager configuration with SNMP:

Procedure

Systems A, B, C: A Tivoli Storage Manager server communicates with a local subagent.
System D: A DPI-enabled SNMP agent is installed. This is required for communication between the Tivoli Storage Manager SNMP subagent, dsmsnmp, and the SNMP Manager you are using. A DPI-enabled SNMP agent is available as part of the AIX® operating system.
System E: An SNMP manager, such as NetView, is installed.
The subagents on systems A, B, and C communicate with the agent on system D.
The agent on system D forwards SNMP traps to NetView on system E.

Results

To run an arbitrary command from an SNMP management application, for example, NetView, follow these steps:

Choose the name and parameters for a Tivoli Storage Manager script.
Use the application to communicate with the SNMP agent. This agent changes the Tivoli Storage Manager MIB variable for one of the two script names that the Tivoli Storage Manager subagent maintains. The SNMP agent also sets the parameter variables for one of the two scripts.
Use the application to retrieve the variable ibmAdsmReturnValue1.x or ibmAdsmReturnValue2.x, where x is the index of the server that is registered with the subagent.

AIX operating systems HP-UX operating systems Linux operating systems Oracle Solaris operating systems To set the variables associated with the script (for example, ibmAdsmServerScript1/2 or ibmAdsmM1Parm1/2/3), the nodes on which the subagent and the agent are run must have read-write authority to the MIB variables. This is done through the SNMP configuration process on the system that the SNMP agent runs on.

Important: In AIX, the default SNMP version is SNMP, V3. The snmpv3_ssw command can be used to switch to SNMP, V1. All of the instructions in this chapter were developed for SNMP, V1. Tivoli Storage Manager continues to use the SNMP, V1 protocols that are still supported in the SNMP, V3 environment. See the IBM AIX Networks and Communication Management Guide, section "Migrating from SNMPv1 to SNMPv3" on how to convert a SNMP, V1 configuration to a SNMP, V3 configuration.

In AIX, the file name is /etc/snmpdv3.conf for SNMP, version 3. If you are using SNMP, version 1, the file name is /etc/snmpd.conf.

Windows operating systems To set the variables associated with the script, the nodes on which the subagent and the agent are run must have read-write authority to the MIB variables. This is done through the SNMP configuration process on the system that the SNMP agent runs on.

Here is an AIX example:

community	public 9.115.20.174 255.255.255.254 readWrite
community	public 9.115.46.25  255.255.255.254 readWrite
community	public 127.0.0.1    255.255.255.254 readWrite
community  public 9.115.20.176 255.255.255.254 readWrite
smux       1.3.6.1.4.1.2.3.1.2.2.1.1.2 public

The statements grant read-write authority to the MIB for the local node through the loopback mechanism (127.0.0.1), and to nodes with the three 9.115.xx.xx addresses. The smux statement allows the dpid2 daemon to communicate with snmpd.

Here is an example of this command used to set and retrieve MIB variables:

snmpinfo -v -ms -c public -h tpcnov73 ibmAdsmServerScript1.1=QuerySessions

This command issues the set operation (-ms ), passing in community name public, sending the command to host tpcnov73, and setting up variable ibmAdsmServerScript1 to have the value QuerySessions. QuerySessions is the name of a server script that has been defined on a server that will register with the Tivoli Storage Manager subagent. In this case, the first server that registers with the subagent is the .1 suffix in ibmAdsmServerScript1.1. The following commands set the parameters for use with this script:

snmpinfo -v -ms -c public -h tpcnov73 ibmAdsmM1Parm1.1=xyz
snmpinfo -v -ms -c public -h tpcnov73 ibmAdsmM1Parm2.1=uvw
snmpinfo -v -ms -c public -h tpcnov73 ibmAdsmM1Parm3.1=xxx

You can set zero to three parameters. Only the script name is needed. To make the QuerySessions script run, retrieve the ibmAdsmM1ReturnValue variable (in this case, ibmAdsmM1ReturnValue.1). For example:

snmpinfo -v -mg -c public -h tpcnov73 ibmAdsmM1ReturnValue.1

The results of the command are returned as a single string with embedded carriage return/newline characters.

Note: Not all MIB browsers properly handle embedded carriage return/newline characters.

In this case, ibmAdsmM1ReturnCode.1 will contain the return code associated with the running of the script. If ibmAdsmM2ReturnValue is retrieved, the results of running the script named in ibmAdsmServerScript2 are returned as a single numeric return code. Notice the -mg instead of -ms to signify the GET operation in the command to retrieve ibmAdsmM1ReturnValue.1. If the entire row is retrieved, the command is not run. Instead, the results from the last time the script was run are retrieved. This would be the case if the following command were issued:

snmpinfo -v -md -c public -h tpcnov73 ibmAdsm

in which all Tivoli Storage Manager MIB variables are displayed.

An SNMP agent is needed for communication between an SNMP manager and its managed systems. The SNMP agent is realized through the snmpd daemon. The Distributed Protocol Interface (DPI) Version 2 is an extension of this SNMP agent.

SNMP managers can use the MIB that is shipped with Tivoli Storage Manager to manage the server. Therefore, an SNMP agent supporting DPI Version 2 must be used to communicate with the Tivoli Storage Manager subagent. This SNMP agent is not included with Tivoli Storage Manager. A supported DPI agent ships with AIX. The Tivoli Storage Manager subagent is included with Tivoli Storage Manager and, before server startup, must be started as a separate process communicating with the DPI-enabled SNMP agent.

Note: The snmpd daemon on Linux does not support DPI. Therefore, the subagent must be configured to communicate with a DPI-enabled SNMP agent that is running on a Windows or AIX system. Alternatively, you can configure the server to communicate with an existing Tivoli Storage Manager subagent. The Tivoli Storage Manager subagent, in turn, communicates with the DPI-enabled SNMP agent.

The SNMP manager system can reside on the same system as the Tivoli Storage Manager server, but typically would be on another system connected through SNMP. The SNMP management tool can be any application, such as NetView or Tivoli Enterprise Console, which can manage information through SNMP MIB monitoring and traps. The Tivoli Storage Manager server system runs the processes needed to send Tivoli Storage Manager event information to an SNMP management system. The processes are:

SNMP agent (snmpd)
Tivoli Storage Manager SNMP subagent (dsmsnmp)
Tivoli Storage Manager server (dsmserv)

Figure 1 illustrates a typical Tivoli Storage Manager implementation:

Figure 1. Tivoli Storage Manager SNMP Implementation

Cross-system support for communication between the subagent and agent is supported, and in some cases required. Figure 2 illustrates a typical Tivoli Storage Manager implementation:

Figure 2. Tivoli Storage Manager SNMP Implementation

Figure 3 shows how the communication for SNMP works in a Tivoli Storage Manager system:

The SNMP manager and agent communicate with each other through the SNMP protocol. The SNMP manager passes all requests for variables to the agent.
The agent then passes the request to the subagent and sends the answer back to the manager. The agent responds to the manager's requests and informs the manager about events by sending traps.
The agent communicates with both the manager and subagent. It sends queries to the subagent and receives traps that inform the SNMP manager about events taking place on the application monitored through the subagent. The SNMP agent and subagent communicate through the Distributed Protocol Interface (DPI). Communication takes place over a stream connection, which typically is a TCP connection but could be another stream-connected transport mechanism.
The subagent answers MIB queries of the agent and informs the agent about events by sending traps. The subagent can also create and delete objects or subtrees in the agent's MIB. This allows the subagent to define to the agent all the information needed to monitor the managed application.

Figure 3. Manager-Agent-Subagent communication

Note:

You can start dsmsnmp and the server in any order. However, starting dsmsnmp first is more efficient in that it avoids retries.
The MIB file name is adsmserv.mib. The file name is located in the directory in which the server is installed.
Merge the contents of the adsmserv.mib file into the /etc/mib.defs file.

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