Host Access Requirements
This section lists the access requirements for host resource data collection. You will use this information to populate the configurations used by the Host Discovery, Validation, and Collection processes.
• Create a list of the name or IP address for each host for which you want to collect data.
• Access Control: For security reasons, most enterprise environments mandate access control where a new non-root account is created, with temporarily elevated access to the required commands provided via an access control command, such as sudo. Otherwise, the root user is required for host access.
For Linux Hosts in access control environments, if a command such as sudo is used and the absolute path is not in the interactive ssh, identify the absolute path of the access control command. See
Verify Command Paths and
Host Access Privileges, Sudo Commands, Ports, and WMI Proxy Requirements.
• Path: APTARE IT Analytics must have knowledge of the correct paths to access commands. An overview of the requirements is listed here, with the details provided in
Verify Command Paths. For Windows hosts, a path is required for fcinfo, hbacmd, and scli commands. For Linux hosts, if the Data Collector is installed on a Windows server, use plink.exe to determine the path; if the Data Collector is installed on a Linux server, determine the path by executing ssh.
• HBA Prerequisites: APTARE IT Analytics uses an internal probing mechanism to gather Host Bus Adapter (HBA) data from Windows hosts. It is critical for the Data Collector to probe the HBA in order to establish a host’s relationship with storage. Without the HBA information, all storage for a host will be listed as local storage.
Note: Do not enable HBA probes for VMware guest host collection.
Windows: One of the following mechanisms is required to collect Windows HBA information. The Data Collector actually uses all of the mechanisms that are available and then merges the data collected from all. A collection error is reported only if all of the following methods fail.
• hbaverify is provided by default with the Data Collector WMI Proxy installation.
• scli - SANsurfer Command Line Interface (SCLI) for Windows from QLogic (SCLI is a separate install from the base install of SANsurfer and often is not installed with the SANsurfer utility).
• hbacmd (HBAnyware from Emulex) is required for both LUN Mapping and HBA data collection. This is typically provided by default as part of the driver software.
• fcinfo - Fibre Channel Information Tool from Microsoft is not typically used, as the previously listed methods are preferred.
Linux: scli or hbacmd (required only for HBA information)
Solaris: scli or hbacmd (required only for HBA information)
HP-UX: fcmsutil (used only for HBA information; should already be installed by default)
For Windows Hosts Only
• Microsoft Exchange 2003: The Data Collector uses WMI for data collection.
• Microsoft Exchange 2007 and 2010: Data collection requires PowerShell remoting to be enabled on the Exchange server. The Data Collector connects to PowerShell via the WMI Proxy to execute the PowerShell commands. For details on remoting, see the Microsoft Administrator’s Guide to Windows PowerShell Remoting.
Verify Command Paths
Verify the command paths that will be used by the Data Collector.
Both Linux & Windows:
• If Veritas Volume Manager is installed on any hosts, note the path to the vxprint command.
• If any multi-pathing software is installed on hosts, note the path to the command.
Linux: Verify the non-interactive SSH path for Linux users for several sample hosts:
ssh <user>@<hostname> env
where <user> is the credential the collector will use to access the host.
To determine the Linux path from a Windows server, you can use a command-line interface to telnet/ssh client software. The following example shows Plink, which is a command-line interface to PuTTY (a telnet/ssh client):
plink <user>@<hostname> env
Example of a PATH for commands:
/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
Windows: Make a note of the paths for the executables identified for HBA data collection. Note that in Windows, multiple paths are separated by a semi-colon ( ; ). For example:
C:\Program Files\Emulex\Util\HBAnyware;C:\Program Files\QLogic\SANSurfer