Abstract; Introduction To The Insight Management Agents Architecture - HP 407484-B21 - ProLiant Essentials Accelerated iSCSI Introduction Manual

Abstract

This technology brief provides an overview of the HP Insight Management Agents for HP ProLiant
servers running the Windows® server operating system. It is intended to provide an architectural
overview of the entire set of client-side software components that are installed on ProLiant servers to
provide integrated manageability using the HP Systems Insight solution. It is assumed that the reader
is already familiar with HP Systems Insight Manager (HPSIM) in managed server environments.

Introduction to the Insight Management Agents architecture

HP Insight Management Agents provide a robust and unique solution for monitoring and managing
ProLiant servers through HP Systems Insight Manager. To provide this functionality, which extends
beyond that of simple SNMP-based management, the Insight Management Agents architecture
requires the installation of a set of software components on each managed server. Although they are
commonly referred to as the Insight Management Agents, it is instructive to think of these as three
different groups of software components, each performing a core function in the overall Insight
Manager architecture.
The first group consists of the Insight agents themselves. There are four different agents in the Insight
architecture for Windows–based servers. As a group they are responsible for collecting all of the
management information about the server. This information is eventually reported and displayed in
the Systems Insight Manager console and the System Management Homepage. This includes
information about the server's health, key operating system statistics, and information about the server
hardware.
The Microsoft SNMP Agent Service is the second component of this architecture. This program
provides the basic set of SNMP services between the managed server and HP SIM.
The third and final component group on the managed server is the System Management Homepage
(SMH) framework. In addition to acting as a web server to deliver detailed information on the
managed server as part of the SIM console, it also implements the core functionality that makes
unique SIM features such as single sign-on and replicate agents settings possible.
Figure 1 shows an overview of the Insight Management Agents architecture and the basic
interoperation of the component groups. The sections that follow describe the roles of each of the
components in the Insight Management architecture and provide more details about the architecture
itself.
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