Oracle Hardware Management Agents

Oracle Hardware Management Agents provide operating-system-specific agents to enable management of your Oracle server.

The Oracle Hardware Management Agents component provides the following software:

• Oracle Hardware Management Agent

• Oracle Hardware SNMP Plugins

• Oracle Hardware Storage Management Agent

• Oracle Hardware Storage Access Libraries

Oracle Hardware Management Agent

The Oracle Hardware Management Agent (Hardware Management Agent) and associated Oracle Hardware SNMP Plugins and Oracle Hardware Storage SNMP Plugins ( SNMP Plugins) provide a way to monitor your server and server module's hardware. With the Hardware Management Agent SNMP Plugins you can use SNMP to monitor the Oracle servers and server modules in your data center, without having to connect the management port of the ILOM service processor to the network. This in-band functionality enables you to use a single IP address (the host's IP) for monitoring you servers and server modules.

The Hardware Management Agent SNMP Plugins run on the host operating system of Oracle servers. The Oracle Hardware SNMP Plugin uses the keyboard controller-style (KCS) interface to communicate with the service processor, and the Oracle Hardware Storage SNMP Plugins use the Oracle Hardware Storage Access Libraries to communicate with the service processor. By regularly polling the service processor, information about the current state of the server is fetched automatically by the Hardware Management Agent. This information is then made available through SNMP, using the SNMP Plugins.

The Hardware Management Agent polls the service processor for hardware information over the KCS interface or Oracle Hardware Storage Access Libraries. The Hardware Management Agent is visible on the network through the SNMP Plugins. The SUN-HW-MONITORING-MIB Net-SNMP plugin communicates over a socket to the Hardware Management Agent daemon service, called hwmgmtd. The Hardware Management Agent also communicates over a socket to the SUN-HW-TRAP-MIB Net-SNMP plugin, sending SNMP traps via the Net-SNMP agent. In addition, the Hardware Management Agent provides sensor and indicator readings, as well as System Event Log records.

The System Event Log (SEL) is stored on the service processor and is used for recording hardware events such as temperatures crossing a threshold. The Hardware Management Agent reads the service processor's SEL records and writes this information to the host operating system's syslog and sends the SUN-HW-TRAP-MIB traps. For storage information, the Hardware Management Agent uses the reads the Oracle Hardware Storage Access Library. Finally, the Hardware Management Agent also maintains a separate log that contains information about the Hardware Management Agent status, which can be used for troubleshooting.

Previous versions of Hardware Management Pack have included a separate Storage Management Agent, but starting with Oracle Hardware Management Pack 2.1, the Storage Management Agent has been merged with the functionality of the Hardware Management Agent.

System storage information is now available via SNMP with the sunStorageMIB.

Oracle Hardware SNMP Plugins

The Oracle Hardware SNMP Plugins consist of two Net-SNMP plugins. These Net-SNMP plugins are compiled versions of three Oracle-specific hardware Management Information Bases (MIB) that have been designed to enable you to monitor your Oracle servers effectively. The Sun HW Monitoring MIB is a newly developed MIB that provides the following information:

• Overall system alarm status

• Aggregate alarm status by device type

• FRU Alarm status

• Lists of sensors, sensor types, sensor readings, and sensor thresholds

• Indicator states

• System locator control

• Inventory including basic manufacturing information

• Product and chassis inventory information (such as serial number and part numbers)

• Per-sensor alarm status

The HW Trap MIB describes a set of traps for hardware events that can be generated by an Oracle server and provides the following information:

• Conditions affecting the environmental state of the server (such as temperature, voltage, and current out-of-range conditions)

• Error conditions affecting the hardware components in the server such as FRU insertion and removal and security intrusion notification

The Storage MIB provides the following information about system storage:

• Basic manufacturing information, properties, and alarm status for controllers

• Properties and alarm status for disks

• Properties and alarm status for RAID volumes

• Status of logical components