Hardware Sentry 10.0.01
Hardware Sentry 10.0.01 fixes some issues in version 10.0.00. Therefore, Hardware Sentry 10.0.00 is no longer available for download and is replaced with version 10.0.01. Note that all new features, improvements and fixed issues released with Hardware Sentry 10.0.00 are now included in version 10.0.01.
Fixed Issues
| • | Temporary files are not deleted on remotely monitored systems through SSH. |
| • | Timeout error when monitoring remote IBM AIX systems through SSH. |
| • | The ProtocolStatus-Command attribute triggers a false alarm for certain remote hosts. |
| • | Password may appear in plain text when a command times out or fails. |
| • | Connectors for Storage systems no longer work when leveraging a locally installed instrumentation layer. |
Hardware Sentry 10.0.00
Important Information
The BMC patch 11.0.00.01: Patch 1 for BMC PATROL Agent 11.0.00 must be installed to use any version of Hardware Sentry. Version 11.0.00i of the PATROL Agent on Windows prevents Hardware Sentry from operating properly. While apparently successfully loaded, Hardware Sentry fails to start and can neither monitor the local system or the remote systems. An error message is displayed stating that no hardware connectors are loaded and that the product needs to be re-installed.
Some connection protocols leveraged by Hardware Sentry now require Java v1.8.00 or higher to operate properly. Ensure that the required Java Runtime Environment (JRE) version is installed on the same system that runs the PATROL Agent. A package for a suitable Java Runtime Environment is available for download on the Sentry Software Web site.
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What's New
Functionality
| • | Hardware Sentry now supports the monitoring of a Windows server from another Windows server through command lines execution. |
| • | A new attribute, LED Indicator, is added to the Hardware LED Monitor Type to report on the state of the LED, typically On, Off or Blinking. The value of the Status attribute (Hardware LED) depends on the LED indicator state. |
| • | Hardware Sentry now supports the monitoring of systems and devices through the HTTP protocol. |
| • | The Hardware Capacity Report Monitor Type has been removed and replaced with the Hardware Report Monitor Type that provides additional information about a system and the monitoring solution at a given time to help solve hardware discovery issues. The report also provides information about the number of executions, the protocol status or the discovery duration. Refer to the Hardware Report chapter for more information. |
| • | Remote host monitoring: Hardware Sentry now offers the possibility to add remote hosts to your monitoring environment individually or in a batch when the hosts share the same configuration settings (OS, protocol, credentials, etc.). The Internal ID, which is used to identify a group of hosts, allows you to identify quickly the hosts that are part of a group in the console. |
| • | Brocade SAN Switch (Brocade MS_HW_BrocadeSwitch.hdf): Hardware Sentry does not report values above 100 % collected by the Hardware Network Interface/Error Percent atrribute. The highest value for this parameter is set to 100 % to avoid unnecessary alerts. |
| • | Hardware Sentry now allows you to provide a single FQDN to associate the system to a device in TrueSight or to provide a comma-separated list of FQDNs when you choose to configure remote monitoring for multiple hosts. FQDNs are composed of the device hostname and domain name and therefore constitute a more secure way to locate and identify a device, particularly in cases where hostnames or IP addresses cannot be resolved. |
| • | Hardware Sentry now allows you to run Agent Queries on PATROL Agents by using the Agent Query Tool for operations that cannot be performed from the standard TrueSight user interface. |
| • | Additional information about the hardware components monitored by Hardware Sentry are now reported in the Monitor Information tab of the Graph Display panel in TrueSight Infrastructure Management (Device ID, Instance ID, Device serial number, etc). These information are listed in the Reference Guide for each Monitor Type. |
| • | Hardware Sentry allows connection and authentication against a remote system with SSH and keyboard-interactive authentication (no actual interaction with the user is required while connecting to the system). |
| • | Alert Actions: Hardware Sentry now triggers specific events by default (rather than Standard 41) to allow events to be forwarded with custom content. Note that existing configurations will now trigger specific events if the default event set by Hardware Sentry is still in use. |
| • | Unknown Status Management: By default, Hardware Sentry now triggers an Internal KM Issue Notification when an unknown status is collected. You need to manually deselect this option in the Unknown Status panel of a policy if you want to disable the notification. Existing policies remain unchanged. |
Changes and Improvements
Functionality
| • | Hardware Sentry can now be configured to automatically clean-up the list of previously discovered devices when the Agent starts. This setting prevents false 'missing device' alerts to be triggered. Note that devices that went missing during the start up (reboot) operation will not be reported as missing. |
| • | Remote monitoring through Telnet is no longer supported. Hardware Sentry now automatically uses the SSH protocol for monitoring remote hosts that were formerly monitored through Telnet. Also, remote monitoring through the SSH protocol has been greatly optimized to improve resource management. Verify that the SSH protocol is available on systems that previously used telnet. |
| • | A new configuration variable (enabledProtocols) has been implemented to list the protocols that are enabled to establish connections with the monitored devices. Users now need to select the protocols they wish Hardware Sentry to use to communicate with the monitored devices. Existing v1.9.60 policies are compatible even though protocols could not be enabled. Hardware Sentry will determine which the protocols need to be enabled depending on the information available on the system and the policy content. |
| • | A new configuration variable (snmpRetryIntervals) has been added to Hardware Sentry to specify the interval (in milliseconds) at which the SNMP client must retry its requests until a response is received or the timeout is reached. |
| • | Hardware Sentry now fully supports Java 9. |
| • | Alert Actions: The Enable Annotations option that adds to the parameter’s graph a comprehensive report of the problem when an alert is triggered is now enabled by default for policies created with Hardware Sentry. Existing policies remain unchanged. |
| • | MSHW-4947: mode configuration options are no longer available from the user interface of the monitoring solution. |
| • | Hardware Sentry KM management: Hardware Sentry now uses the CMA mode only if an applicable policy is enabled in CMA. Also, users can manage other loaded KMs running on a PATROL Agent from CMA and still configure Hardware Sentry from the Classic Console. |
Fixed Issues
Functionality
| • | The size of the header buffer used by SSH, SNMP, and WBEM requests has been increased to ensure the proper execution of requests producing large result outputs. |
| • | SNMP v3 Client: SHA authentication is now fully supported as a valid authentication scheme by the Java Collection Hub. |
| • | Event messages generated by Hardware Sentry are no longer limited to 2048 characters to avoid truncated display. |
| • | Java processes would sometimes keep on running after a restart of the PATROL Agent preventing proper Hardware Sentry upgrades. |
| • | Sudo was never activated for ipmitool when sudo was enabled in the Hardware Sentry policy. |
Monitored Components
| • | Network Link Speed values (Hardware Network Interface) above 20GB/sec are now properly collected and reported. |
Connectors
Hardware Connectors are *.hdf files that describe how to discover hardware components for specific platforms. Connectors also detect failures and performance deterioration that Hardware Sentry interprets and reports in the Console.
The Hardware Connector Library lists all the connectors available for Hardware Sentry, provides a description and valuable information about the platforms and operating systems to which they relate, along with installation procedures. Read the Hardware Connector Library 6 Release Notes to learn more about the latest updates, changes and improvements brought to the connectors for Hardware Sentry v10.0.00.
Supported Platforms
See the Supported Platforms and Requirements documentation for further information.
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