Nimsoft Monitor controller...

controller Guide v5.6 series

Nimsoft® Monitor™

Legal Notices Copyright © 2012, Nimsoft. All rights reserved.

Warranty

The material contained in this document is provided "as is," and is subject to being changed, without notice, in future editions. Further, to the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Nimsoft Corporation disclaims all warranties, either express or implied, with regard to this manual and any information contained herein, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Nimsoft Corporation shall not be liable for errors or for incidental or consequential damages in connection with the furnishing, use, or performance of this document or of any information contained herein. Should Nimsoft Corporation and the user have a separate written agreement with warranty terms covering the material in this document that conflict with these terms, the warranty terms in the separate agreement shall control.

Technology Licenses

The hardware and/or software described in this document are furnished under a license and may be used or copied only in accordance with the terms of such license.

No part of this manual may be reproduced in any form or by any means (including electronic storage and retrieval or translation into a foreign language) without prior agreement and written consent from Nimsoft Corporation as governed by United States and international copyright laws.

Restricted Rights Legend

If software is for use in the performance of a U.S. Government prime contract or subcontract, Software is delivered and licensed as "Commercial computer software" as defined in DFAR 252.227-7014 (June 1995), or as a "commercial item" as defined in FAR 2.101(a) or as "Restricted computer software" as defined in FAR 52.227-19 (June 1987) or any equivalent agency regulation or contract clause. Use, duplication or disclosure of Software is subject to Nimsoft Corporation’s standard commercial license terms, and non-DOD Departments and Agencies of the U.S. Government will receive no greater than Restricted Rights as defined in FAR 52.227-19(c)(1-2) (June 1987). U.S. Government users will receive no greater than Limited Rights as defined in FAR 52.227-14 (June 1987) or DFAR 252.227-7015 (b)(2) (November 1995), as applicable in any technical data.

Trademarks

Adobe®, Acrobat®, Acrobat Reader®, and Acrobat Exchange® are registered trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated.

Intel® and Pentium® are U.S. registered trademarks of Intel Corporation.

Java(TM) is a U.S. trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Microsoft® and Windows® are U.S. registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.

Netscape(TM) is a U.S. trademark of Netscape Communications Corporation.

Oracle® is a U.S. registered trademark of Oracle Corporation, Redwood City, California.

UNIX® is a registered trademark of the Open Group.

Contact Nimsoft

For your convenience, Nimsoft provides a single site where you can access information about Nimsoft products.

At http://support.nimsoft.com/, you can access the following:

■ Online and telephone contact information for technical assistance and customer services

■ Information about user communities and forums

■ Product and documentation downloads

■ Nimsoft Support policies and guidelines

■ Other helpful resources appropriate for your product

Provide Feedback

If you have comments or questions about Nimsoft product documentation, you can send a message to [email protected].

http://support.nimsoft.com/

mailto:[email protected]

Contents 5

Contents

Chapter 1: controller 5.6 7

controller General Overview ........................................................................................................................................ 8

Chapter 2: controller Configuration 8

The Setup tab ............................................................................................................................................................... 9

The Nimsoft Tab .................................................................................................................................................. 10

The Misc Tab ....................................................................................................................................................... 11

The Advanced Tab ............................................................................................................................................... 12

The Environment Tab .......................................................................................................................................... 13

The Virtual Tab .................................................................................................................................................... 14

The Alarm Tab ..................................................................................................................................................... 15

The NAT Tab ........................................................................................................................................................ 16

The IP Version Tab............................................................................................................................................... 17

The Status tab ............................................................................................................................................................ 18

Advanced Configuration ............................................................................................................................................. 19

Using DNS Names for the Hub Computer in robot.cfg ........................................................................................ 19

Limiting the Number of Open Ports .................................................................................................................... 20

Robot Maintenance Mode .................................................................................................................................. 20

Chapter 1: controller 5.6 7

Chapter 1: controller 5.6

This description applies to probe version 5.6.

This section contains the following topics:

Documentation Changes (see page 8) controller General Overview (see page 8)

controller General Overview

8 controller Guide

Documentation Changes

This table describes the version history for this document.

Version Date What's New?

5.6 March 2012 Fixed issues with passive robots losing connection; changed buffer size for fetching IP addresses to support systems with a large number of interfaces; allow passive robots to issue SID for local use; NIS cache read fix for memory leak problem with large NIS cache; changed hub and probe request queuing to FIFO

5.5 November 2011 SSL communication mode fixes

4.0 October 2009 Added support for detection of gLibc up to version 2.12 on Linux systems.

Related Documentation

Documentation for other versions of the controller probe

Getting Started with Nimsoft® Probes

Nimsoft® Probes Reference

controller General Overview

The Controller is a core component of the Nimsoft Robot and is responsible for scheduling the other probes and maintaining contact with the Nimsoft Hub.

The controller probe focuses on keeping configured probes running according to the probe configuration and handles 'housekeeping' operations towards Nimsoft, such as telling the Hub about its state, name-lookup services, license management, etc. It responds to the elements in the configuration files robot.cfg and the controller.cfg as well as to commands requested over the registered port TCP/48000.

Chapter 2: controller Configuration

The Setup tab


Double-clicking the controller probe in the Infrastructure Manager application brings up the configuration GUI for the Controller.

The Setup tab

This section describes the properties for the Setup tab.

The Setup tab contains the following subtabs:

■ Nimsoft

■ Misc

■ Advanced

■ Environment

■ Virtual

■ Alarms

The Setup tab

10 controller Guide

■ NAT

■ IP version

The Nimsoft Tab

The Nimsoft tab contains three sections:

■ Robot Name

The name of the Robot.

■ Automatically detect: The Host name will be used.

■ Set specific name (override): You can specify the robot name to be used.

■ Robot IP-address

The IP-address that the Robot is associated with.

■ Automatically detect: The host IP address will be used.

■ Set specific addr. (override): You can specify an IP-address for the robot. Typically used when a host has more than one network interface.

■ Secondary HUB

Defines the method used to determine the secondary hub. The secondary hub will be used if the primary hub is unavailable.

■ Wait for primary hub to become available

The controller will wait for the primary hub to be available.

Note: This option is replaced by the Automatically detect option if the Search the subnet for a temporary Hub option is selected.

■ Automatically detect (searches the subnet)

The controller searches the subnet for a responding hub within the domain when the primary and secondary hubs are unavailable.

■ Specify Hub (IP/name)

■ Specify the secondary hub with its IP address/hostname.

■ Specify Hub (domain name)

■ Specify the secondary hub with its domain (DNS) name.

The Setup tab


The Misc Tab

The Misc tab contains the following sections:

■ Identification properties

User tag 1 & 2: User-defined tag to be used as a grouping/locating mechanism. This tag is displayed in various lists in the Infrastructure Manager.

■ Log Level

Sets the amount of detail to be logged to the log file. Log as little as possible during normal operation to reduce disk consumption, and increase the level of detail when debugging.

■ Log Size

The default size of the log file is 100 KB. This field allows you to change the size of the log file according to your needs.

■ Hub update Interval

Determines at what interval the hub is contacted with an "alive" message. The range is 1 to 180 minutes. Note that the hub is notified at a shorter interval when changes occur in the probe list.

■ Quality of Service

On Robot uptime, reported as state change.

If ticking this option, QoS messages on Robot uptime will be sent. The QoS message 'status = up' will be sent when the Robot starts, and the QoS message 'status down' will be sent when the Robot stops.

Set QoS source to Robot name instead of computer host name

Note: that this option is disabled, unless the Robot name is set to Set specific name (override) on the Setup > NimBUS tab.

Otherwise the host name of the computer hosting a probe is by default used as QoS source in QoS message from the probes.

The Setup tab

12 controller Guide

Selecting this option, the robot name specified on the Setup > NimBUS tab will be used instead.

■ Robot mode

Normal or passive mode. Passive robots cannot initiate communication with a hub. All contact must be initiated by the hub.

The Advanced Tab

The Advanced tab contains the following sections:

■ Robot options

This section allows you to set options for the robot:

Automatically unregister from HUB at shutdown

When the robot is stopped, an unregister message is sent to the hub on which it is registered. This will make the robot disappear from Infrastructure Manager. If this is not done, the stopped robot will appear with a red icon, enabling the operator to detect the situation.

Suspend all probes when no network connection is available

When running the robot on a computer with no network connection, you can determine whether the robot should be active - alarm messages will be spooled and flushed when a network connection is again available - or enter a sleep mode where all probes are suspended until a network connection is again available.

Note that this function is available only on Windows platforms.

The Setup tab


First probe port number

Daemon type probes will normally register a command port, which is allocated run-time on probe start-up. Setting the probe port number will make the robot allocate specific port numbers for the probes as they are started. Use this option if you want the probes to have port numbers in a specific range for router / firewall purposes.

Time offset from UTC

This option lets you override the local time zone setting. The time specification must be specified as time offset from UTC (in seconds).

■ When no contact with hub

This option lets you set limitations for attempts to connect an unmanaged Robot (a Robot that has lost the contact with it’s’ hub) to a Hub, using the Tools > Connect Robot option in the Infrastructure Manager.

The two following options are available:

■ Allow move only within domain

■ Do not allow robot to be moved.

■ Data Origin (override origin set by the Hub)

Origin name

QoS data from probes are tagged with a name to identify the origin of the data.

If specifying an origin name in this field, this name will be used to identify the origin of the data.

If leaving this field blank, the Hub name will be used.

Note however, that the Origin field under Advanced Settings in the Hub GUI lets you specify an origin name of your own choice to be used, rather than the Hub name.

The Environment Tab

The Robot controller will read the variable/value pair in the list and insert it into the Robot environment. This environment is inherited by the probes managed by the Robot.

The Setup tab

14 controller Guide

The Virtual Tab

This tab lists virtual robots served by the robot/controller.

Virtual robots will, via the proxy probe, be created for ‘remote’ Probes (probes installed and running on computers without a Robot). The ‘remote’ probe is configured to know which Robot to be served by.

In the Infrastructure Manager, the ‘remote’ probe will appear as a probe on a virtual robot.

The Setup tab


To add user tags for a virtual robot:

1. Select the Hub in Infrastructure Manager, and the robots will be listed in the Main Window.

The Version column will notify if it is a virtual robot or not.

In the example below, lab 5 is virtual on xpkost, which means that the robot xpkost serves the virtual robot lab 5.

2. Right-click the xpkost robot in the Navigation Pane and select Properties to bring up the controller configuration tool.

Now you may select the Setup > Virtual tab, right-click and define user tags for the virtual robot.

The Alarm Tab

This tab contains the internal alarm messages issued by the controller on the different error situations that may occur. You are allowed to select the severity level for each alarm message. For the condition ‘Probe restart when the probe does not respond’, you can also select that no alarm message is issued.

The Setup tab

16 controller Guide

The option ‘Time interval at which alarms will be resent’ defines the time interval in minutes between each time an alarm will be sent on an error condition.

If this field is left blank, the controller will never attempt to resend the alarms.

The NAT Tab

This tab contains the setup for NAT (Network Address Translation), as described earlier.

NOTE: If the Robot is separated from the Hub by a NAT (Network Address Translation) device, the robot will be able to send alarms and QoS messages, but the hub will be unable to communicate back.

One solution is to setup static NAT mappings for each Robot behind the NAT device. You can then add the key robotip_alias to the controller section of the robot.cfg file on the Robot computer. This key changes which IP address gets registered when the Robot initially connects with the Hub.

The key robotip_alias should specify the static NAT mapping IP address that the Hub and the clients on the other side of the NAT device should use to access the robot.

Example

<controller>

robotip_alias = 193.71.55.153

...

<\controller>

The Setup tab


The IP Version Tab

The IP-version tab contains the following sections:

■ IP version support

Select the appropriate IP version you are running.

■ Local IP validation

With this option enabled, if the robot IP address is not set to localhost, it is checked against a list of IP addresses that are known valid for that server before it is used.

The Status tab

18 controller Guide

The Status tab

This section describes the properties for the Status tab.

Robot name

The actual/current name of the Robot.

Robot IP-addr.

The actual/current ip-address of the Robot.

Robot version

The version of the Robot.

Op. Sys.

Operating system name.

Op. Sys. type

The type of the operating system (UNIX/Windows etc.).

Op. Sys descr

Operating system description.

Indicator and status information

The status indicator will, together with a status message, give information about the current controller status (Green means OK, Red means an error situation).

Advanced Configuration


Right-clicking this indicator lets you set the Robot into maintenance mode for the period specified (see details about maintenance mode in the controller introduction text).

The dialog popping up lets you specify the date and time when you want to exit maintenance mode and return to normal mode again.

When entering maintenance mode, the robot does a full restart and only starts the core components. Only Nimsoft core components (controller, spooler, hdb, hub, distsrv, nas and proxy) will run. The Robot will stop sending messages (alarms and QoS).

Installed packages

Clicking this button lists all packages installed on the Robot in a separate window.

Robot environment

Clicking this button opens the Robot Environment window, listing lots of information about the computer running the Robot software.

Hub connectivity

Shows which Hub is current, and which are defined as primary and secondary.


This section provides some advanced configuration information.

Using DNS Names for the Hub Computer in robot.cfg

Version 2.80 or higher of the probe allows the DNS name of the hub machine to be used in the robot.cfg file in 2 ways:

Using the full DNS name of the computer instead of the IP address (as the hubip parameter). The robot will be able to recognize its main hub and return to it after a failover situation.

The hubip parameter will be replaced by an IP address on a robot move operation. The robot can fail over to a different hub if the DNS is down.

Using the full DNS name in the new parameter hub_dns_name. The robot will first attempt to use the hub_dns_name to look up the hub IP address. If this fails, the hubip parameter is used. When the DNS name lookup is successful and the ip address found is different from the hubip parameter, this parameter is replaced.

The same functionality is available for the secondary hub, using the secondary_hub_dns_name parameter.


20 controller Guide

Note that the hub_dns_name is lost on robot move and secondary_hub_dns_name is lost on change of secondary hub initiated by the controller configuration tool.

Robot.cfg file parameters affected

<controller>

hubip =

hub_dns_name =

secondary_hub_dns_name =

</controller>

Limiting the Number of Open Ports

You can limit the number of open ports in your environment ( for example, in a firewalled network) by setting the proxy_mode key in the robot.cfg.

In the robot.cfg, set the proxy_mode = 1 to send all the traffic through a specific port, for example, port 48000.

Robot Maintenance Mode

Controller version 2.80 or higher supports maintenance mode. Right-clicking one or more Robots in the Infrastructure Manager main window pane, selecting Maintenance, lets you set the selected Robot (s) into maintenance mode for the period specified.

This is useful if you want to stop the computer where the robot is running due to maintenance etc.

The Robot will stop all probes and stop sending messages on the Nimsoft. Only Nimsoft core components (controller, spooler, hdb, hub, distsrv, nas and proxy ) will run.

When entering maintenance mode, the robot does a full restart and only starts the core components. In Infrastructure Manager the probe icon of other probes will indicate that these probes are suspended while the robot is in maintenance mode.

On entering maintenance mode, the end time of the maintenance mode period must be given. When this time is reached the robot will go back to normal operation and start up any suspended probes.

Probe distribution and activation can be performed while the robot is in maintenance mode, however the affected probes will be suspended and not actually started.

Note: You can also set a Robot in maintenance mode by right-clicking the status indicator on the Status tab (see description of the properties for the Status tab below).

Nimsoft Monitor controller...

Documents

Transcript of Nimsoft Monitor controller...