Preparing for manual discovery
Seed systems serve as the starting
point for building the
IP Manager
topology. Routers and switches are good seed system
candidates because their MIBs contain many addresses and much information
about additional systems in the network.By using manual discovery
without autodiscovery, the
IP Manager
will discover just the seed systems. The seed systems
are presented to the IP Manager
as entries in a seed file, rather than being presented
individually by using the Add Agent
command.
A comprehensive seed file can only be created if the network topology
information is complete and accessible. The provides information on the Add Agent
command.The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS)
Publication 140-2 is a U.S. government computer security standard
governing cryptographic modules and is required for any software purchased
by the US government and US military. FIPS 140 mode allows you to
use only SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3 except MD5 and DES authentication
protocols. If you run SNMPv1 or SNMPv2c, then FIPS 140 mode has no
impact. If you are using encryption, then you must use a certified
encryption library and only certain encryption routines. When you
discover an SNMPv3 device, you need to select the option “V3” in the
“Add Agent” window. The “Authentication Protocol” option lists only
SHA and not MD5 and the “Privacy Protocol” option lists only AES and
not DES. This is because MD5 and DES are not supported in FIPS 140
mode. When you discover SNMPv3 devices with MD5 and DES protocol as
seed, the devices go to the Pending List and display as “Invalid”
or “Unsupported SNMP V3 protocol”.
“Support
for FIPS 140-2 in IP 9.0” section in the
VMware Telco Cloud Service Assurance Installation Guide for SAM, IP, and ESM Managers
and the provide more information on the FIPS 140 mode implementation.In situations where the network topology information is
incomplete, unavailable, or constantly changing, manual discovery
is combined with autodiscovery. The seed file can be much smaller
because the seed systems that are specified for manual discovery also
serve as a starting point for autodiscovery. Autodiscovery automatically
discovers the managed network from the seed systems.
For manual
discovery, or manual discovery that is combined with autodiscovery,
you create a seed file by editing the BASEDIR/smarts/conf/seedfile
template in the
IP Manager
installation area. The provides the procedure for creating
seed files.Manual discovery can be used to discover SNMPv1,
v2c, or v3 systems in IPv4 or IPv6 networks.