In my previous post I’ve covered the configuration of the management pack for HP Enclosures. But this MP only monitors health of the enclosures and not the blade servers inside via SCOM. In order to monitor blade servers or any other standalone HP server you have to install and configure HP ProLiant Server Management Pack. Actually if you want to use HP BaldeSystem Management pack you must import HP ProLiant Server Management Pack also.

HP ProLiant Server Management Pack can monitor HP servers trough two different methods:

• SNMP method – For this method you must install HP Insight Management Agents on every server you will monitor besides the SCOM agent. This method uses SNMP to send trap messages.
• WMI method – For this method you must install HP Insight Management WBEM Providers on every server you will monitor besides the SCOM agent. This method relays on WMI service.

As I am a Windows Engineer I prefer WMI method and on this article I will cover only this way of implementation.

The guide that is provided with this management pack covers both methods and I recommend reading it. This article will walk you trough the basic actions you need to do to install and configure HP ProLiant Management Pack for SCOM:

1. First you need to download the management pack itself from here. The MP is part of HP Insight Control for Microsoft System Center solution.

2. You will download one zip file that contains – 32-bit installation file, 64-bit installation file, License agreement file, Release notes file, User Guide and Troubleshooting Guide.

3. Copy 64-bit installation (if your SCOM server is 32-bit use 32-bit installation) to your RMS server and install it. It is pretty simple installation you can leave the default options. During the installation you will be present to choose if you want to install SNMP based method, WMI based method or both. If you choose only one of the methods the installation will only import the management pack that corresponds to the chosen method. It is best to choose both because you can always switch between methods or for example you can monitor one group of servers with one method and another group with the other one.

Note In the documentation of the MP it is not mentioned that the MP requires to be installed on the RMS server. In fact the MP can be installed on any Management Server or any server that have SCOM agent installed.

4. After the installation is finished the HP ProLiant Management Pack should be imported in SCOM and HP Custom Data Manager application should be installed. This application will allow you to enter additional information (fore example end of hardware support date) for individual servers that will be populated in SCOM Database.

5. After the MPs are imported discovery of HP servers will start. Discoveries are enabled by default so there is no additional configuration there. At this step it is best to check if all your HP monitored servers have HP Insight Management WBEM Providers installed. This can be achieved by opening SCOM console and navigating to Monitoring Pane –> HP Systems –> Windows Server State. Here you can see the discovered HP Servers in your environment. Modify this view to show HP Management Version column. This will show you if SCOM agent found HP Insight Management WBEM Providers.

6. Next and final step is to configure the MP to use WMI based method. By default HP ProLiant Server MP uses SNMP based method and this can be switched to WMI by overriding a rule. To do that you have to navigate to Authoring Pane –> Management Pack Object –> Object Discoveries. There you have to look for HP ProLiant Server Discovery Rule. When you find that rule select it and right click on it. Select Overrides –> Override the Object Discovery ->For all objects of type: Windows Computer. A new dialog will appear. Select all check boxes under Override column, change the value for SNMPWMIPrefernece from SNMP to WMI and save the override to your HP ProLiant Server Management  Pack for overrides.

Note If you want to switch to WMI based method only for particular servers create SCOM group and populate the group with the servers you want to monitor via that method. When you make the override in step 6 override for specific group and choose the custom created group.

7. This will switch to WMI based method for all Windows computers in your environment. After you made this setting you can again navigate to Monitoring Pane –> HP Systems –> Windows Server State.Edit the view to show Monitoring Source column. You will see your HP servers slowly switching from HP Insight Management Agents for monitoring source to HP Insight Management WBEM Providers.

After step 7 no further overrides are need in order to make HP ProLiant Server Management pack to work via WMI based method.