BMC Performance Manager Express for Hardware

Release Notes for v2.7.28

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What's New

ImportantUpgrading to BMC Performance Manager Express for Hardware v2.7.28 is only possible from the following older versions 2.5.00, 2.6.00, 2.7.00, 2.7.03, 2.7.05, 2.5.12, 2.7.13, 2.7.17, 2.7.2x.

 

Platform

Monitored Components

Brocade Embedded SAN Switches in DELL Blade and HP BladeSystem

FC ports (status, link status, link speed, error percentage, traffic in MB/s), Ethernet ports (status, link status, link speed, error percentage, traffic in MB/s), temperatures, fans and power supplies.

Cisco UCS B-Series and C-Series

CPUs, memory, network cards, LEDs, disks, temperature, fans, voltages and power supplies.

Note: The connector leverages the IPMI standard.

EMC VNX and VNXe

Disks, storage processors, FC ports, Ethernet ports, fans, power supplies and batteries

Emulex HBA on Solaris

Status, link status, link speed and traffic (in packets/s and MB/s).

Note: the connector relies on the hbacmd command line utility

HP EVA Disk Arrays

Disks, controllers, FC ports, batteries, temperature sensors, fans and power supplies.

HP ProLiant running VMware ESX or Linux (WBEM)

CPUs, memory, network cards, HBA, disks, temperature, fans, voltages and power supplies.

Note: A new connector adds support for the WBEM version of the HP Insight Management Agent on Linux and which replaces the native VMware ESX hardware monitoring agent.

HP StorageWorks MSA 2000 and P2000

Disks, logical disks, network cards, FC ports, temperatures, fans, voltages and power supplies

QLogic HBA on Solaris

Status, link status and link speed.

Note: the connector relies on the scli command line utility

VMware ESX5i

CPUs, memory, network cards, HBA, disks, temperatures, fans, voltages and power supplies.

SEN_HW_CAPACITYREPORT: Three parameters were added to the Capacity Report application class to report the total number of faulty and missing devices in the managed element(s):
Degraded Device Count
Failed Device Count
Missing Device Count
SEN_HW_LUN: This new application class provides detailed information on the location and availability of the remote LUNs in disk arrays mounted through an HBA.
Full Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) support: The product is now capable of monitoring various servers, in-band and out-of-band, through native IPMI (typically newest IBM xSeries servers, Sun blade chassis, Cisco UCS servers, etc.).

Changes and Improvements

Platform

Changes/Improvements

All Linux systems with SNMP enabled

Ethernet ports are better identified with their device name (e.g. eth0) instead of an SNMP-based number.

Brocade SAN Switches

Added the monitoring for the Control Processors, Switch Blades and CR Switching Blades to facilitate monitoring or large Brocade SAN Switches with blade modules.

Ethernet ports are better identified with their device name (e.g. eth0) instead of an SNMP-based number.

Cisco MDS SAN Switches

Added the monitoring of the x-bar modules as a separate "Blade" with an overall status.

Cisco UCS

Cisco UCS Blade servers in Cisco UCS chassis show their customized "user label" in the console.

The actual location of Cisco UCS blade servers in the chassis is now shown in the Locator parameter of the corresponding instance, instead of in the name of the instance itself.

The objects representing Cisco UCS blade servers are now identified by their actual model names instead of a product code.

EMC Clariion, Symmetrix, V-Max, VNX

Components have more meaningful identifiers.

Components are now always properly attached to the appropriate enclosures.

Storage Processors, Batteries and Ethernet port monitoring added.

Queries and code optimized to allow more and larger disk arrays to be monitored from the same Patrol Agent.

IPMI-enabled Servers (including Cisco UCS, IBM xSeries, Hitachi ComputeBlade, Sun x86 and x64)

Object naming has been improved to better identify the monitored device.

McData SAN Switches

Added the monitoring of Fans, Backplanes, Control Processor Cards, Serial Crossbars, UPM Cards.

Port numbering in SAN switches monitored through the Fibre Alliance connector reflects accurately the numbering in their corresponding administration interface.

Ethernet ports are better identified with their device name (e.g. eth0) instead of an SNMP-based number.

Sun SPARC running Solaris (sun4u and sun4v)

Addition of a detection criterion to monitor the number of prtpicl processes. A large number of prtpicl processes indicate that the picld service has failed and leads to no collect values / missing alerts.

Deactivation of the ipmitool connector on sun4v servers. Monitoring for these types of servers is performed using prtpicl or the Sun snapshot utility.

Better handling of the overall unstability of the picld service on Sun Solaris

Properly retrieves the model name of the server on Sun Fire 480r and V490 systems in the output of the prtpicl command, and  old instances are properly handled to prevent the retention of missing components

CPU faults not related to a specific core are now properly reported through the fmadm utility.

The total memory size was added to the overall memory status parameter if individual memory modules status is not available from prtdiag.

Better integration with BMC ProactiveNet Performance Management: Application Classes and Key Performance Indicators are now automatically enabled and set when importing a BMC Portal adapter into BMC ProactiveNet.
The Missing Device Detection feature is no longer available for the following application classes: SEN_HW_LOGICALDISK, SEN_HW_VOLTAGE, SEN_HW_TEMPERATURE, SEN_HW_ENCLOSURE, SEN_HW_LED.
On systems monitored through the IPMI connector, alerts clearly display the name of the sensor that caused it. This makes easier for administrators to understand the origin of the hardware problem.
Sensor naming has been made clearer on systems monitored through the IPMI connector.

Fixed Issues

Sun Sparc Systems monitoring: Fans whose speed is reported in a decimal format were not discovered by the product.
Monitoring Sun SPARC with prtdiag/prtpicl: Sensors that intermittently report an unknown or error status in prtdiag were creating false alarms in the console. 'Unknown' and 'Error' status reported by prtdiag are now correctly interpreted as 'Unknown' and can be configured to trigger a warning or an alarm.  Also, a detection criterion to monitor the number of prtpicl processes has been added to the PM to avoid collection issues and missing device alerts
Sun Blade Chassis monitoring failure: The monitoring of Sun Blade Chassis failed when setting up a remote monitoring. Some firmware versions of the CMM respond with a blank value for the first chassis sensor ID, and this caused the connector detection criteria to fail. (The affected versions of the firmware do not provide Power Supply Status information).
False Alerts on Network Cards on IBM AIX: All Driver Flag lines are now searched to determine status. Previously only the first line was analyzed, which resulted in false alerts when additional flags were added, usually "Debug".
False Alerts when monitoring Sun SPARC with prtdiag/prtpicl: Sensors that intermittently report an unknown or error status in prtdiag were creating false alarms in the console. 'Unknown' and 'Error' status reported by prtdiag are now correctly interpreted as 'Unknown' and can be configured to trigger a warning or an alarm.
Timeout errors and false alerts on Cisco SAN Switches: the PM now isolates the network card (show interface) command from the other collects, as it can take 10 minutes to complete, to allow other components to collect and to prevent no collects/timeouts for other classes.
Support for x-bar in Cisco SAN Switches: The connector for Cisco SAN Switches has been modified to add x-bar modules as a separate "Blade" with an overall status.
Monitoring Dell EqualLogic PS Series Disk Arrays: No error was raised when the physical disk status was "Offline"
Unexpected disk instances and/or missing CPUs in IBM xSeries running Linux and Windows: The connector has been modified to prevent untimely invalid disk instances, and CPUs detection is now based on the CPU speed instead of whether or not the CPU has a description.
Monitoring Sun Servers via their ILOM systems: Invalid OID error messages were raised as the connector did not handle situations where sensors had either a numerical or a discrete value. The issue did not occur when the sensor had both a numerical and a discrete value.
Monitoring servers configured with MPIO: The "VMI-Disks" connector's status was repeatedly going into alarm on servers configured with MPIO. The connector is now deactivated if only MPIO disks (LUN Multi-Path Disk Device) are found.
On IBM xSeries systems, some temperature sensors indicated a negative value which represents the number of degrees under the alert threshold. These sensors caused the KM to generate "Invalid Temperature value for instance [...]" error messages in the System Output Windows of the PATROL Agent every 2 minutes.
The PM could not collect fan, temperature and power supply status from NetApp filers not equipped with individual sensors.