ITM Agent Insights: How to Configure the VIOS Premium Agent

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The VIOS agent comes pre-installed with VIOS.   Below are the steps required to configure the VIOS premium agent.            
         
Step A) From the VIOS system:                                            
- Login as padmin                                                        
- lssvc lists the ITM agents that are installed. The output would look like this:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
$ lssvc                                                                  
ITM_premium                                                              
ITM_cec                                                                  
TSM_base                                                                 
ITUAM_base                                                               
TPC_data                                                                 
TPC_fabric                                                               
DIRECTOR_agent                                                           
perfmgr                                                                  
ipsec_tunnel                                                             
------------------------------------------------------------------------                                                              
Above, ITM_premium refers to the VIOS premium agent.
- cfgsvc is the command used to configure the agent. The command is run as follows:                                               
cfgsvc ITM_premium -attr Restart_On_Reboot=TRUE hostname=<tems_server> managing_system=<hmc-name>
                                                                         
Above, replace:
<tems-server> with the hostname or IP address of your TEMS
<hmc-name> is the name of the HMC
                                                                         
The cfgsvc command creates the keys necessary for communication.  However, for ssh communication to be set up, you need to transfer the keys. The procedure needs to be completed on the HMC and you have to login as hscroot on versions of the VIOS agent prior to 6.21.                        
                                                                         
Step B) From the HMC                                                     
                                                                         
To find out what the public key is that was generated by the cfgsvc command, run:
viosvrcmd -m <CEC> -p <partition-name> -c "cfgsvc ITM_premium -key"      
                                                                         
Above, <CEC> is the name of the frame on which the VIOS partition exists
<partition-name> is what you would see under "Active Profile" from the HMC web interface for the VIOS partition.

The above command would return a key. You can then authorize a connection to the HMC from the VIOS partition by running:
mkauthkeys --add '<public-key>'
                                                                         
This seals the setup of ssh communication keys between the VIOS Lpar and the HMC. If you want to test to make sure, you can go to the AIX shell from the VIOS machine by running:
$oem_setup_env

and then try an ssh to the HMC:
#ssh hscroot@<hmc-hostname>                                              
                                                                         
It should NOT ask for a password.
                                                                         
Step C) Start the VIOS agent as padmin
$startsvc ITM_premium
                                                                         
To stop the VIOS agent, use the command:
$stopsvc ITM_premium     

Additional ITM Agent Insights series of IBM Tivoli Monitoring Agent blogs are indexed under ITM Agent Insights: Introduction.

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