Config Automation - Discovery

[Anon Anon]

Hi There,

Need to start design of CA Configuration Discovery. Set-up is huge. 4000 Servers with mix & match of different flavors of OS & Applications.
Help me to draft a questions and also I need to know few details about Discovery.

1) What is the best case scenario for Agent Based & Agent Less discovery?
2) What are the advantages & dis-advantages of both?
3) Can we put a proxy servers at remote location with lower bandwidth speed?
4) Bandwidth traffic is required for agent based & agent less discovery?
5) How frequent we can schedule discovery?
6) Blue print understanding
7) Database requirement

[Adnan Hafeezullah]

Agents are the way to go. They are lightweight and require minimal amount of network traffic as it gets the set of operations in bulk and sends the response back one time; versus agentless which will communicate back and forth from the Server to Target Host for each operation\inquiry needed to run

Also,with agents, its a single technology you need to setup versus agentless that uses SSH or WMI, or even telnet if needed. Each one of those technologies can have issues\require additional configuration. Along those lines, WMI can be "nasty" at times due to network and Windows security settings. The agent uses one TCP port and it will be operational. On the same token, agent can be used as a Proxy to other agents for remote locations that don't have much bandwidth and or for security reasons (not opening many ports in firewall)

Database will be the bottleneck of any CCA Environment, the better the db, the better performance (64 gigs is a safe recommendation, I know people drop their mouth when I say that but, at least it gets clients thinking high numbers versus trying to get by with 8 gigs). To help the performance, you can utilize grid nodes, these are the work horses \ scalable servers for CCA. It is strategically placed near the database, not by location or domain.

To determine the number of Grid Nodes, you will need to know
Number of servers being discovered,
Workload
Number of blueprints
Amount of details in each blueprints
Frequency of Discovery
Management Profile Options
Snapshot
Change Detection
Catalyst Integration
Rule Compliance
Other operations that take place using those servers where the grid nodes are
Number of partitions \ jobs on the Grid Nodes
Network latency Overall
Communication from Grid Server to Database Server (most bottle neck area)
The number of Grid Servers is a wait and see scenario, if needed more, implement more. Currently, no set number based on the items of Workload

In Short, what are you planning on discovering on the systems? Basic Info? Web Servers? DBs? The World? All of that matters, so if you cna provide a more detailed on what the objective is I we can help break it down further for you

Regards,
Adnan

[Manirul_Hak]

Hi Folks,

I need an icebreaking as I am very much new in this CA Configuration Automation product.I have installed CCA Server as well as CCA Agent.Both are in same machine.I can log in to the CCA server.But I can not see that any server has been discovered.As like other CA Product CA ITCM,If I install the agent,it will instantly report to the sever and can be seen in the DSM explorer.But for CCA its not happening.Do I need to manually discover this host machine? I tried going  Mangement-->Servers---->Select Actions------>Mangement Actions---->Run Discovery.But no server is getting discovered. Please guide me to discover the servers and Services if agent is installed.

Please help me.

 

Thanks

Manirul

[Manirul_Hak]

Anyone please help me.Does the CCA Agent automatically discover Servers and Services or I have to manually  discover the servers? If I need to discover manually please tell me the procedure a bit.

Thanks in advance.

 

Regards

Manirul

[Gregg Stewart]

Hello Manirul,

CCA Agent's can be installed so that they report/register with a CCA Server. If you have not explicitly set this up then you can discover the agent manually or automatically via some type of scheduled network discovery profile. If the server is not being discovered when doing it manually then I wouldn't rely on automating that process yet. Is the server discovered but the agent is not? If it discovers the server but not the agent then I would recommend checking to make sure that the CCA Server (or more accurately the server where NDG is installed - by default I think its on the CCA Server) can telnet to the port that the agent listens to on the agent machine (port 8063). If the server does not get discovered then check to make sure that the CCA server can ping the agent machine. If neither of these things help then you may want to open a support issue.

Best Regards,

Gregg

[Adnan Hafeezullah]

I would like to break it down just a bit further

Detecting a Server (to be added to the CCA UI via install) vs Seeing the server in the CCA UI and Discovery Information about that server

If you don't have the server added to the CCA UI, you can use the following methods to accomplish this
A. Install the agent manually on the server (or automatically via software delivery tool), while setting up the agent.Properties file, ensuring you populate either the server: or fullserver: parameters accordingly..  This will Self Register the agent machine to the CCA server automatically once the agent Service starts
B. From the CCA UI --> Serversà Servers --> Table Actions --> Create Server --> Enter hostname and\or IP and follow the wizard to completion
C. Create \ Run a Network Profile to discovery hostnames and or IPs (with or without Range) for the servers to be added to the CCA UI upon detecting the servers existence based on the Scan {Policy (Ex: Ping Sweep (ICMP) or TCP Connect (TCP Ports 22,80,135)

 

Once you have the server added to the CCA UI   AND    the Access profile set is for an agent (there are other methods, but for the sake of this update, we will stick with agents)

You can either run adhoc discoveries in using two different methods or have it scheduled

Adhoc Method A.  From the CCA UI à Servers à Servers page, select the server(s) you want to discovery (checkbox) and form the Select Actions menu à Management Actions à Run Discovery (it will discover the blueprints that are assigned to the Management Profile allocated to those servers, respectively)

Adhoc Method B.  From the CCA UI à Servers à Management Profiles à select the Management Profile(s) you want to run, from the Select Actions menu à Run Management Profile with Discovery.  This will run the Management Profile on the servers that are assigned to it

Scheduled Method.  Within each Management Profile, under the Schedule tab, you can set the time you want the profile to run.  This will start the profile for and discovery the data from the servers assigned to that profile

 

If data is not being discovery, you can confirm the agent is installed using Telnet (as Gregg said) or what I tend to use is a web browser from the CCA Server (or Grid Node) going to http://<targethost>:8063.  If you should see some XML information; if you do then it’s a valid connection, if not, check if the agent is started, that its running on port 8063 (default ) by running netstat on that target machine) and then check firewalls on both ends of the communication (both software and hardware)

 

Please let me know if you need further clarification on any of this

[Manirul_Hak]

Hi Gregg,Adnan.

Thanks for the clarification.Its really helpful and now I could discover the server using Network profile discovery based on TCP cconnect scan.

Adnan,I  have some other concerns too.Please enlighten us a little bit.

a. I could see that all the servers are getting discovered where the agents are installed as well as where the agents are not installed.

So my concern is what is the need of agents if I can discover the agents without installing agents?

b.Is it possible to install softwares in these discovered server through this CCA product?

c.How can I integrate CA SDM with this CCA .I am using CA SDM r12.9 and CCA r12.8.I know there is connector available.But I am not sure whether the connector for CA SDM r12.9 is available or not.If you discuss the integration procedure a bit,it will be very much helpful.

Thanks a lot.

Regards

Manirul

 

[Adnan Hafeezullah]

Hi Manirul,

A.    When you say "being discovered without agents", are you referring to WMI and/or SSH discoveries?  If so, then that is correct, it will get the same information.  The main difference is performance, huge performance difference at that.

The agents will get the all instructions it needs to run, run locally and compile the results back to the server\grid.  For WMI and SSH the server\grid will send each instruction to the target server to run and compile the results there (yes we can tweak some settings to run more file based), but the fact of performance is that the agent is far superior.  Also, you need to worry about security for WMI with the DCOM and WMI classes and for SSH, if you are using SUDO, the sudoers file needs to be setup correctly, if not, then the appropriate user needs to have the necessary access rights across all those systems; whereas once the agent is installed as a service, no security concern is needed besides opening the 1 port for communication.  If there ever comes a need for troubleshooting; it’s much easier to leverage the debugging methods of an agent tan using system tools for MWI and SSH debugging

B.    Technically speaking, yes you can install software from CCA, but its HIGHLY NOT RECOMMENDED to do so.  If you need to, you can leverage the macro feature to execute some silent installer; macros are used more for remediation of configuration files rather than full blown installs.  Not to mention the security concerns about doing this …

Just to clarify, the integration is from CCA-CMDB, versus SDM; I say that in terms of CCA can get the CIs into CMDB versus CCA opening a ticket within SDM; that’s where the line is drawn. So now concentrating on the CMDB aspect of it, there are two methods which this can be accomplished
1) CCA-BOXI-CMDB Integration
This is still supported but no future enhancements are considered as it was built as an interim solution until the Catalyst Integration gets release.  The way this one works is you log into the BOXI CMC UI and execute a report, which connects to the CCA Universe, compiles an XML file which then triggers a grloader command that gets inserted into CMDB

2) CCA-Catalyst-CMDB Integration
As of today, this is the preferred method which can be execute two different ways, but both from the CCA UI
1) From the CCA UI, in  the Management Profile, there is a checkbox for “Catalyst Integration”; this will export the data to the Catalyst Server based on attributes you set from the Catalyst Tab
2) the Catalyst Tab, along with attributes, you can set and execute the jobs you want to export the CIs
Either case, once the CIs are sent to the Catalyst Server, the CMDB Connector takes the data from Catalyst and puts it into CMDB

For further reading
BOXI Integration: https://support.ca.com/phpdocs/7/common/greenbooks/CAACM_Integration_CAACM_CACMDB_Green_Book_ENU.pdf
and
https://support.ca.com/cadocs/0/CA%20Configuration%20Automation%20r%2012%208-ENU/Bookshelf_Files/HTML/CCA_CMDB_IntegrationGuide/index.htm

For Catalyst Integration:
https://support.ca.com/cadocs/0/CA%20Configuration%20Automation%20r%2012%208-ENU/Bookshelf_Files/HTML/ConnectorGuide/index.htm
SDM Connector
https://support.ca.com/irj/portal/anonymous/phpsupcontent?contentID=%7bA44CC810-6554-46EF-B20D-70DCB69479DD%7d

 

[Manirul_Hak]

 

Hi Adnan,

Thanks for enlighten us with some very good information.As like me,I hope this is very much helpful for this community members as well .

 

I was just wondering whether the Catalyst 3.2 Connector supports CA Service Desk Manager r12.9? I  am using CA Service Desk r12.9 and CCA r12.8 .So Catalyst Connector 3.2 will work for me?

 

From the standard documentation I can see:

The Catalyst 3.1 connector supports both CA Service Desk Manage r12.5 and 12.6

The Catalyst 3.2 connector supports CA Service Desk Manage r12.5, 12.6 and 12.7

 

But I could not find supportability matrix for CA Service Desk Manager r12.9.

 

Please tell me whether I can use Catalyst Connector 3.2 to integrate CA SDM r12.9 with CCA r12.8?

 

Thanks

 

Manirul

[Adnan Hafeezullah]

Yes SDM r12.9 is supported with Catalyst 3.2, which in parallel, CCA r12.8 integrates with Catalyst 3.2