Foglight for Infrastructure 5.9.5 - User Guide

Managing PowerVM HMC agents

Foglight™ for PowerVM relies on PowerVM HMC Agents to collect data from the monitored PowerVM® infrastructure. Foglight for Infrastructure features are provided with Foglight for Infrastructure.

When you install Foglight for Infrastructure, you can create PowerVM HMC Agents to collect performance information about your PowerVM environment. To connect to the monitored PowerVM system, the monitoring agents must have sufficient permissions. For complete information, see the following sections:

Configuring HMC user accounts

To connect to the monitored Hardware Management Console (HMC), each PowerVM HMC Agent requires a valid user account. An HMC account requires a user name and password to connect to the HMC. You specify this information by creating a Foglight credential of the User Name and Password type (see Configuring PowerVM HMC agent credentials).

Each HMC user account has a role that grants access to specific parts of the HMC. Each PowerVM HMC Agent instance must be associated with a valid HMC account. To ensure that the HMC account provides access to all elements of your monitored environment, including Virtual I/O Servers (VIOS), the account must be granted a role with sufficient permissions.

For more information about HMC roles, see your HMC documentation.

Configuring PowerVM HMC agent credentials

A valid user account is required to monitor an HMC. When you configure an HMC account (as described in Configuring HMC user accounts), you must ensure the HMC account information is provided to a Foglight credential:

You can create a credential using the Manage Credentials dashboard. To access this dashboard, on the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click Credentials. On the Credentials page that appears, click Manage Credentials. To create a credential using this dashboard, click Add.

The credential must include the following information in order enable your PowerVM HMC Agent to access the monitored HMC environment:

After creating the credential, you must ensure that the lockbox in which the credential is created is released to the Foglight Agent Manager associated with the PowerVM HMC Agent instance that you are about to create (see Creating PowerVM HMC agents). You can release a credential to a desired Agent Manager using the Manage Lockboxes dashboard. To access this dashboard, on the navigation panel, under Dashboards, click Credentials. On the Credentials page, click Manage Lockboxes.

For complete information about managing Foglight credentials and lockboxes, see the Foglight Administration and Configuration Help.

Creating PowerVM HMC agents

When you install Foglight for Infrastructure, you can create PowerVM HMC Agents to collect performance information about your PowerVM environment. PowerVM HMC Agents collect performance information about your PowerVM environment. Each PowerVM HMC Agent monitors an HMC instance. You can create one or more PowerVM HMC Agent instances, as required.

Before you create a PowerVM HMC Agent instance, you must ensure that Foglight for Infrastructure is installed on the Management Server, and that the Host Agents package containing the PowerVM HMC Agent is deployed to the desired Agent Manager. For more information about installing Foglight for Infrastructure on the Management Server and deploying the Host Agents package, see your Foglight for Infrastructure documentation. For general instructions on how to install a cartridge or deploy an agent package, see the Foglight Administration and Configuration Help.

Create PowerVM HMC Agent instance by running the Create Agent wizard. This wizard is accessible from the Agent Status dashboard. To access this dashboard, on the navigation panel, under Dashboards, choose Administration > Agents > Agent Status. For complete information about the Agent Status dashboard and the Create Agent wizard, see the Foglight Administration and Configuration Help.