Using the SystemEDGE VCAIM to manage the SpectroSERVER through the Spectrum Virtual Host Manager (VHM) functionality

Products

• CA Spectrum

Issue/Introduction

Using the SystemEDGE VCAIM to manage the SpectroSERVER through the Spectrum Virtual Host Manager (VHM) functionality can cause problems.

 

Environment

Spectrum 10.x
VMWare ESX

Cause

The SpectroSERVER is installed and running on a Virtual Machine (VM) in a VM environment.

The ESXi that hosts the SpectroSERVER VM is managed by the VCAIM through the SystemEDGE Agent.

The SystemEDGE Agent with the VCAIM is discovered and modeled in Spectrum in the SpectroSERVER landscape that is managed as a VM by the SystemEDGE Agent with the VCAIM.

This creates, through the VHM functionality, a VM based model of the SpectroSERVER VM within the same SpectroSERVER.

The VM can be SNMP managed through the VHM discovery functionality or as a basic 'Pingable' VM model.

This creates a currently unsupported solution and architecture in Spectrum. The cause for that is that the SpectroSERVER is not currently coded to support what is effectively a duplicate model of the VNM (Virtual Network Manager aka SpectroSERVER) model. The VNM model is the default model present in Spectrum that is used to configure and manage the SpectroSERVER.

The end result of this kind of configuration will cause the duplicate models to conflict with each other and throw unnecessary alarms among other problems such as model evaluation loops that have also been seen to crash the Spectrum eHealth integration processing built into the Spectrum tomcat web server service/process.

Resolution

One possible solution to this problem is to model and manage the SystemEDGE agent and its VCAIM, which would thus be managed by the VHM functionality, on a second SpectroSERVER in a distributed Spectrum environment.

If the Spectrum environment involved only has one SpectroSERVER running, the other possible solution available at this time is to move the SpectroSERVERs VM to be managed by an ESXi host that is NOT managed by the SystemEDGE agent and its VCAIM that is managed by Spectrum and the VHM functionality.

One last possible workaround involves some changes to the VC-AIM side of this configuration and architecture. It involves taking the userid used for the VC-AIM and making a permissions hard exclusion for only the Spectrum SS VM's. The initial permissions are set at the root for read-only so the AIM can view all objects. Next delete the VHM Pingable or SNMP managed models in Spectrum that represent the VM for the SpectroSERVER and restart the Spectrum Tomcat web server service/process. This results in the VC-AIM being able to see the SpectroSERVER VM in its inventory, but prevents it from being passed on to Spectrum and/or eHealth via the VHM functionality.