All host objects are set up automatically by the BMC Atrium Discovery Discovery and the Reasoning process.

To view a host object

1. Click the Hosts link in the Infrastructure Summary section of the Infrastructure page.
2. Select a host from the list.
   The BMC Atrium Discovery Host page groups the field names in a logical format.
   
   The information fields for a host object are arranged in the following groups:

• General Details: General information on the host such as its name, type, and operating system. This group is open by default, all others are closed. See General Details below.
• Identity: Information on domain names and IP addresses. See Identity for details.
• Operating System: The Operating system and service pack of this host. See General Details for details.
• Hardware and Network: Information on the physical hardware installed on the host, and networking information. See Hardware and Network field for details.
• Inference: The inference details. See Inference for details.
• Other: See Other for details.

You can also display provenance information by clicking the Show Provenance button. Provenance information is meta-information describing how the other information came to exist. For more information, see Provenance Information.

A list of information fields that may be displayed in the General Details group for a host object are detailed in the following table.

General Details field

A list of information fields that may be displayed in the Identity group for a host object are described in the following table.

Identity field

A list of information fields that may be displayed in the Operating System group for a host object are described in the following table.

Operating System field

A list of information fields that may be displayed in the Hardware and Network group for a host object are described in the following table.

Hardware and Network field

A list of information fields that may be displayed in the Inference group for a host object are described in the following table.

Inference field

CMDB Synchronization field

A list of information fields that may be displayed in the Other group for a host object are described in the table below.

Other

The data in BMC Atrium Discovery is read-only. BMC strongly recommends that you do not edit any nodes as your version will not be retained by BMC Atrium Discovery. However, if you need to enable the edit facility, you must contact your BMC Atrium Discovery Administrator for details.

To run host reports

A number of context-sensitive reports are available for hosts. See Host Reports for further information and examples of these host-related reports.

File System field

The File System field contains information on the local, exported and remote file systems mounted on the host.

The links in each row link to the File System node page for that file system. The first displays a LOCAL file system node.

The second displays a node EXPORTED from one host linked to a REMOTE node from another (the nfs file system from the client and server point of view).

The information fields for a File System node are shown in the following table.

BMC Atrium Discovery reports the size and free percentage of the file system. In some file systems part of the space is reserved for root (or similar) access and is not usable by general users. Thus, the reported size and free space may exceed that available to general users.

Host and switch mismatches

The View Object page of a host displays attributes and relationships that are already set on that host. In the Network Interfaces row, it also displays information on the connection settings of the host's interfaces. This information displays only if the CiscoWorks importer is installed and active.

The Network Interfaces row is divided into fields. Of these, the speed, duplex, and negotiation fields reflect whether there is a performance affecting mismatch, or whether insufficient information is available to establish whether a mismatch exists.

If a mismatch is detected, or information is missing so that the correct configuration cannot be confirmed, then the field is filled with a background color.

• Where a mismatch is detected, the field is filled with a red background.
• Where there is insufficient information to confirm the correct configuration, the field is filled with a yellow background.

You can view details of the mismatch or the missing data details by clicking the + symbol in a colored field. The details are displayed in a popup window.
In the example below, the speed field is colored red. Clicking the + sign displays the Mismatch Details popup box. The Host Speed and Switch Speed are different.

Windows NIC discovery

Discovery is able to determine information on Windows network interface cards. The Interface is shown on the host page. In the Network Interfaces row, it displays information on the connection settings of the host's interfaces.

The Network Interfaces row is divided into fields. Of these, the speed, duplex, and negotiation fields reflect whether there is a performance affecting mismatch, or whether insufficient information is available to establish whether a mismatch exists.

If a mismatch is detected, or information is missing so that the correct configuration cannot be confirmed, then the field is filled with a background color.

• Where a mismatch is detected, the field is filled with a red background.
• Where there is insufficient information to confirm the correct configuration, the field is filled with a yellow background.

You can view details of the mismatch or the missing data details by clicking the + symbol in a coloured field. The details are displayed in a popup window.
You can view details of the network interface card or the switch by clicking on the name link or the switch link respectively.

In a non-administrator user discovery of a Windows 2003 host using WMI, the Manufacturer attribute of the network interfaces will not be populated.

The negotiation, speed, duplex, driver_date and driver_version attributes are not set for Windows NT4 systems. The information is not stored in the registry as in later versions of Windows.

HBA modeling

Host Bus Adapter modeling provides the ability to determine which firmware version is running on individual Fiber Channel HBA cards in the network under Discovery and report on them.

This function has been extended in BMC Atrium Discovery 8.3 to retrieve information from QLogic cards in addition to Emulex. The methods have been improved so they should be able to retrieve information form other vendors' cards. These methods are supported on the following platforms:

• Linux (2.6 and 2.4 kernels)
• VMware ESX/ESXi
• Solaris
• AIX
• Windows

To view a list of HBA interfaces

When an HBA card is discovered the information is displayed on the host page in the user interface. An example host page for a Linux host with discovered HBA details is illustrated in the following screen.

The HBA Interface(s) row is divided into fields. The discovered HBA card ID and the firmware version that the card reported are displayed. This identifier string is set by the manufacturer to identify that particular version of the firmware.

The WWNN and WWPN columns display the World Wide Node Number and World Wide Port Number respectively. A Fiber Channel target is assigned its WWNN at loop initialization time. It is possible for the WWNN to change between one loop initialization and the next. Every time a system boots or a target is added to or removed from the Fiber Channel, the loop will be re-initialized.

There are two possible configurations for HBA cards. You can have an HBA card with one node and two ports or you can have an HBA card with two nodes and one port each. The Emulex cards have two nodes and one port each.

1. Click any of the listed HBA cards.
2. The Fiber Channel HBA page is displayed for that card.
3. From here you can view any other related objects, view history or destroy the object.

Information access

The HBA discovery scripts have been revised and updated from a monolithic script to one in which multiple scripts are provided, each one discovering using a single technique.