Release Notes for EMS Hardware Monitors (December 1999)

• Overview
• Configuring Hardware Monitoring
• Documentation
• Changes
• Known Problems
• Monitors Provided
• Monitor Dependencies
• Defect Reporting
• SD Product Structure

These release notes cover the December 1999 (IPR 9912) release of Support Plus for HP-UX 11.00/10.20 running on S800/S700 systems.

NOTE: As of the September 1999 release, the name of the Diagnostic/IPR Media has been changed to Support Plus. In addition, the format has changed so that there is a separate CD-ROM for each version of the operating system (HP-UX 10.20 and HP-UX 11.0).

Overview

Included on the Support Plus CD-ROM are the EMS Hardware Monitors - an important tool for maintaining system availability. The EMS hardware monitors allow you to monitor the operation of a wide variety of hardware products and be alerted immediately if any failure or other unusual event occurs. Hardware event monitoring is available to users running HP-UX 10.20 or 11.X (IPR 9902 and later).

Hardware event monitoring provides a high level of protection against system hardware failure. By using hardware event monitoring, you can virtually eliminate undetected hardware failures that could interrupt system operation or cause data loss.

Configuring Hardware Monitoring

The EMS Hardware Monitors are installed at the same time as the Support Tools Manager. Once the monitoring software is installed, monitoring is automatically enabled.

By default, messages regarding major warning, serious and critical events that occur on hardware being monitored will be:

• Written to /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log
• Sent to EMAIL address root

All events will be stored in /var/opt/resmon/log/event.log.

To configure, enable, or disable hardware event monitoring, run the monitoring request manager: /etc/opt/resmon/lbin/monconfig .

The Peripheral Status Monitor (PSM) and the The Kernel Resource Monitor (krmond) are configured differently. They use the EMS GUI. See: http://docs.hp.com/hpux/onlinedocs/diag/ems/ems_gui.htm

Documentation

For the latest and most complete information on EMS Hardware Monitors and the Support Tools Manager (STM), see the Web page "Diagnostics":

          http://docs.hp.com/hpux/diag/

At this site, you will find Overviews, Tutorials, Quick Reference Cards, Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and much other material.

For complete information on installing and using EMS hardware monitors, as well as a list of supported hardware, refer to the "EMS Hardware Monitors User's Guide" available at the above site. An electronic copy of this book is also included on the Support Plus CD-ROM in the <mount_point>/DIAGNOSTICS directory.

Changes

Changes in the EMS Hardware Monitors for the the December 1999 (IPR 9912) release include:

• New monitor: System Status Monitor (sysstat_em). This monitor checks whether the target systems being monitored are up and running, and whether they have Online Diagnostic software installed and running.
• Fixed a problem with the FC60 hardware monitor (fc60mon) which was released in September 1999. The version released in September does not consistently report problems with the FC60 array.
• Added a World Wide Web Universal Resource Locator (URL) to hardware event headers. At this URL, users can get the most current information about the event.
• Fixed problems for all hardware event monitors, so that:
  • Extra error logging is removed (enh)
  • Fixed problem whereby reading of Global.cfg fails under certain conditions (GSY1604934).
• Enabled the SCSI Tape Devices Monitor (dm_stape) to decode the new TapeAlert V3 flags. Without these changes the dm_stape monitor may report "undefined event" messages and/or "cannot decode" event messages when monitoring a device which supports the TapeAlert V3 standard.
• Enhancements to Core Hardware Monitor (dm_core_hw). Added support for L-Class, Models L2000 and L1000 (codename Rhapsody) and A-Class, model A500 (codename Crescendo).
• Enchancements to LPMC monitor (lpmc_em).
  • Improved code for checking if the monitor is supported on a particular system,
  • The monitor will now shut itself down if it finds itself running on wrong O/S or wrong processor.
  • The monitor will now use 32-bit HPAs for HPUX_B_11_00. using chip_type and Hversions.
  • The monitor will now use event override functionality.
  • The monitor will now use correct define_events in the config file.
  • Added support for:
    • Model 9000/785/C3000 (PA 8500 processor at 400MHz) and Model 9000/785/B1000 (PA 8500 processor at 300MHz). Codename for these workstations is "Allegro."
    • Model J5000 (2-way) and J7000 (4-way). Codename for these workstations is "Forte."
    • A-Class, Model A500 (codname "Crescendo")
    • L-Class, Models L2000 and L1000 (codename "Rhapsody")
    • Model B2000 (codename "Kazoo")
• New events and more complete event descriptions for the Disk Array FC60 Hardware Monitor (fc60mon). Four new events are now reported, all of which occur when the cache bit settings alter from their expected values:
  • Write Cache Enable bit is disabled.
  • Read Cache Disable bit is enabled.
  • Write Cache Without Batteries is enabled.
  • Cache Mirror Enable bit is disabled.
  In addition, all the event descriptions for fc60mon are now in the new, more complete format.
• Changes to Disk Monitor (disk_em) to fix problems whereby:
  • The monitor ignored the user-defined action for the generation of an event. (These actions can be defined in the disk_em.cfg file or the fw_disk_array.cfg file.)
  • The monitor generated erroneous events when an incorrect LUN was detected (for example with an XP256 disk array).
• Updated man page for monconfig.
• Fixes to timing problems. For example:
  • Timeout messages in /var/opt/resmon/log/client.log from startmon_client and/or from psmctd when reboot or when enable monitoring on some systems.
  • Output messages from monconfig "Check monitoring" command indicating there there might not be any hardware when the hardware is there as indicated by an ioscan output. For example:

    /adapters/events/FC_adapter ... NOT MONITORING.
      (Possibly there is no hardware to monitor.)
    

  • Output messages from monconfig "Check monitoring" command not listing hardware as having active monitoring requests when the hardware is there as indicated by an ioscan output. For example, monconfig only shows the following when there are other disks connected:

    /storage/events/disks/default ... OK.
     For /storage/events/disks/default/56_52.4.0:
      Events =  5 (CRITICAL) Goto TCP; host=hprdstl2.rose.hp.com port=61802
      Events >= 1 (INFORMATION) Goto TEXTLOG; file=/var/opt/resmon/log/event.log
      Events >= 3 (MAJOR WARNING) Goto SYSLOG
      Events >= 3 (MAJOR WARNING) Goto EMAIL; addr=root
    

Known Problems

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CAUTION: Monitoring Changes for disc30, sdisk and disk array devices

As of IPR 9902 (Feb 99 release), there has been a change to the way that monitoring is done for disc30, sdisk and the HA Disk Array Models 10, 20, and 30FC.

Formerly, the "diaglogd exec" programs (pdisc30_exec, pharaymon_exec, and psdisk_exec) handled driver error entries for these devices.

As of IPR 9902, these programs have been deleted and their functionality is now provided by the EMS Hardware Monitors.

If you had customized the configuration files for the dialogd exec programs (disk30_exec.cfg, sdisk_exec.cfg, and haraymon_exec.cfg) you may wish to re-configure the EMS Hardware Monitors to achieve the same results.

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CAUTION: Compatibility Problem with EMS-Related Products (ServiceGuard, HA Monitors, etc.)

If you install the OnlineDiag bundle (Dec 99 or later) onto a computer running older revisions of EMS-related products, these products may experience compatibility problems Affected products include MC/ServiceGuard, ServiceGuard OPS Edition and High Availability Monitors. The only critical problems occur with the following versions:

MC/ServiceGuard            A.10.10, A.11.01, A.11.03
ServiceGuard OPS Edition   A.11.02, A.11.03

Support Tools and the EMS hardware monitors are not affected. For complete information, see EMS Incompatibility Problem.

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Problem Starting Monitors on IPR 9912

On the Dec 1999 release (IPR 9912) ONLY, there may be a problem when starting monitors. The problem does not occur on previous releases and it is fixed in the March 2000 release (IPR 0003).

The problem may occur on a reboot or when enabling monitoring or when new hardware is added to the system. If one of the monitors is not responding (like the HUB or Switch monitor without the C++ patch), it could take up to 2 hours for the psmctd daemon to complete processing. What this means is that if the customer goes into the EMS GUI during this time and tries to list the "status" resources, they will get a timeout or an error indicating there are no instances.

The workaround for this problem is to go into the /var/stm/config/sys/psmctd.cfg file, uncomment the line with MAX_RETRIES and change it to 10 instead of 120.

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Monitors Provided

Monitors are provided to support the following:

• HP Disk Arrays
• Fibre Channel Interconnect
• Fibre Channel Interface Cards
• High Availability Storage System Enclosures
• SCSI Tape Products
• HP SCSI Disk Products
• HP Fibre Channel Disk Products
• HP Fibre Channel Switch
• Memory
• LPMCs
• Core Hardware
• Kernel Resources
• HP Fibre Channel High Availability Disk Array (Model 60/FC)
• SCSI1, SCSI2, and SCSI3 Interface Cards.
• System Status

In addition, a Hardware status monitor is provided to monitor the current status of the products supported by the above list.

For detailed information concerning which products are supported by which monitors and additional dependencies, check the "Diagnostics" section of Hewlett-Packard's online documentation web site: http://docs.hp.com/hpux/diag/ .

Monitor Dependencies

Several of the monitors have special requirements, such as patches or certain versions of firmware. Current requirements are described in the "Supported Products" page under "EMS Hardware Monitors" at http://docs.hp.com/hpux/diag/ . Requirements are also listed in chapter 2 of the manual "EMS Hardware Monitors User's Guide".

Note: The Fibre Channel Arbitrated Loop Hub Monitor and the Fibre Channel Switch Monitor require special configuration which is described in their data sheets in the "EMS Hardware Monitors User's Guide" (chapter 6).

Note: a patch is required if your system includes a HP SureStore E Disk Array FC60. This patch is required to to run the EMS hardware monitor (fc60mon) or STM tools for this device.

For HP-UX 11.0 (S800 only):
      PHCO_19571: s700_800 11.00 HP Array Manager/60 cumulative patch

For HP-UX 10.20 (S800 only):
      PHCO_19485: s700_800 10.20 HP Array Manager/60 installation patch

Defect Reporting

Use CHART to report defects in the EMS Hardware monitors. The project name is diag.hw_mon.hpux. If you don't have access to CHART, contact an HP representative to enter a defect for you.

SD Product Structure

The EMS hardware monitors are installed as part of the OnlineDiag bundle (product number B4708AA). In addition, they utilize the EMS framework, product number B7609BA.

Note: EMS Hardware Monitors are installed as part of the STM-UUT-RUN Fileset. However, the EMS Hardware Monitors are dependent on the EMS-Core and EMS-Config products and additional filesets in the Sup-Tool-Mgr Product.

For information on the STM product, refer to the STM release notes file /usr/sbin/stm/Rel_NOTES.STM.

SD Bundle: OnlineDiag
   Description: On-line Diagnostic System (Series 800/700)

   SD PRODUCT: Sup-Tool-Mgr
      Description: Support Tools Manager for HP-UX Systems

      SD SUB-PRODUCT: Manuals
      Description: Support Tools Manager Manual Pages

         FILESET: RELEASE_NOTES
            Description: HPUX STM Release Notes

         FILESET: STM-MAN
            Description: HPUX STM Manual Pages

      SD SUB-PRODUCT: Runtime
      Description: STM Manual Runtime

         FILESET: STM-CATALOGS
            Description: HPUX STM Shared Libraries

         FILESET: STM-SHLIBS
            Description: HPUX STM Shared Libraries

         FILESET: STM-UI-RUN 
            Description: HPUX STM User Interface
         
         FILESET: STM-UUT-RUN
            Description: HPUX STM Unit Under Test Runtime 

   SD PRODUCT: EMS-Config
      Description: EMS Config

         FILESET: EMS-GUI
            Description: Event Monitoring Service Graphical 
                         User Interface

   SD PRODUCT: EMS-Core
      Description: EMS Core Product

         FILESET: EMS-CORE
            Description: Event Monitoring Service Core Files

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