Spectrum Office Hours was held on Thursday, April 14. The transcripts are as follows:
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: Hi Everyone, we will get started in just a few minutes
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: OK, let's get started -
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: we have product management and support engineers standing by... who has the first question ?!
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: An open question to all the users out there - who has upgraded from 9.x and 10.x, and have then found performance improved? We trust CA, but want to verify as we prepare to take that step here.
robert borowicz to Everyone: What is the state of Spectrum's ability to handle SNMPV3 comms, and specifically "Duplicate SNMPV3 EngineID coherency?
robert borowicz to Everyone: I have in test. Perf looks VERY good.
John S. to Everyone: This would be more request/future enhancements - but can Spectrum include more MIB support for AVAYA/Nortel devices...?? versus having to self certify..
Jiangang to Everyone: We (FTS) have upgraded from 9.3 to 10.1. We get really more faster.
robert borowicz to Everyone: We also have UIM - so I'm looking at Spectrum 10.1.1 and UIM 8.4 integration capabilities.
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: @robert borowicz - we are heading there too, replacing SysEdge with UIM, so we will want the closest integration possible.
John Bigrow to Everyone: I agree MIBS and device support should be a priority the life cycle of gear is typically 3 years or less.
robert borowicz to Everyone: The Web Client looks very promising. Leadership is excited to see that.
Nagesh Jaiswal to Everyone: @John, Yes. You can contact support ticket and we will proirtize it.
Scott to Everyone: I would like to be able to clear an alert from the web client.
robert borowicz to Everyone: We also use VAIM to control SystemEDGE config files
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: Can any of the customers respond to Joseph... we can give feedback but I'm sure he wants to hear from other customers..
robert borowicz to Everyone: Direct agent based threshold violations as traps to specific SS's
Scott to Everyone: has anyone upadted to 10.1.1 and loaded up the Jasper reporting yet?
Scott to Everyone: repeat Joseph I missed the question.
Joseph Ackley to Everyone: @robert borowicz I do not know of any changes to handle duplicate SNMPV3 Engine ID's. I will check it out and get back to you offline
Nagesh Jaiswal to Everyone: @Scott, I think this feature is available today. You can clear alarms from Web client.
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Scott - Support certainly has! It's much faster than current BOXI releases.
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Joe - we get dup alarms on paired devs and virtualized instances of devs
Sean to Everyone: Should clients begin moving to Jasper instead of BOXi installs for new 10.1 environments?
robert borowicz to Everyone: specifically these large Cisco Firewalls our Network team has
Scott to Everyone: Sean I would say yes due to Jasper looks like where they are pushing new users to go. after march 31.
John S. to Everyone: As for VAIM/SysEdge... Will UIM be replacing these products and is there a estimated date? We access to VAIM but havent implemented w/Spectrum & Performance Center.. With these 2 in house don't see the additional benefits in adding UIM...
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Sean - We suggest running BOTH. It is not a full featured release like BOXI currently is, so running both allows you to familiarze yourself with Jasper. As Spectrum releases new releases we will update Jasper accordingly, slowly phasing out BOXI.
Nagesh Jaiswal to Everyone: @Sean, For new customer Jaspersoft is the only option. But for old customer they can still continue to use BOXI for some time
Sean to Everyone: I see, thanks for the info!
Jiangang to Everyone: I asked for Device Certification for BARRACUDA, SPLUNK, AVAYA, CheckPoint in new Spectrum Version. Are those already integrated in new version 10.1.1? or what is your plan to integrate those in Spectrum and officially certificated ?
robert borowicz to Everyone: @John - did you see the new Dev Cert initiative from CA?
Praveen to Everyone: When UIM -Spectrum is integrated the Vmware datacenter can be moved to other landscapes ..there is any future plans to move the physical devices too...
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: @robert - what kind of paired devices? Our SysEdge trapped alarms are properly de-duplicated in our Spectrum.
robert borowicz to Everyone: CAPC, UIM, eHealth - fast cycle dev cert
robert borowicz to Everyone: but Spectrum is not part of that
John S. to Everyone: @robert borowicz - no I have not (new Dev Cert initiative from CA)
robert borowicz to Everyone: Cisco ASA's
robert borowicz to Everyone: Cisco VSS
robert borowicz to Everyone: I need the ability to more closely compare EngineID's
robert borowicz to Everyone: don't think the column in Locator is accurtate but I could be wrong
Scott to Everyone: what about the ability to add multi device mibs? most mibs these days simply will not import into spectrum without heavy mib file modification.
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Scott - have had great luck with this
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: @John S. - we are moving to UIM because VAIM/SysEdge is trap-based monitoring, so we lose updates when devices are in maintenance, whereas UIM is active agent polling so it always knows and shows the current state within a few minutes.
robert borowicz to Everyone: I'm old... and remember the old MIB compiler... :-)
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: @John, you might be interested to watch this. we just had an event about the Consolidated Device Certification Program https://communities.ca.com/community/ca-infrastructure-management/blog/2016/03/22/webcast-recap-consolidated-device-certification-program-for-ca-unified-infrastructure-management-ca-performance-management-and-ca-ehealth
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: UIM also offers us HA and DR, while we've never figured out how to do that for VAIM.
robert borowicz to Everyone: Right Melissa - and Spectrum is NOT part of that
Klaus to Everyone: Hi. Can Jaspersoft reporting be used for Spectrum 10.1.1 & SOI 4CU1 on a single server?
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: @robert, correct -
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Joeseph - yeah with secure discovery of a SysEDGE model in VAIM per domain... HA/DR is impossible in current arch...
John Bigrow to Everyone: I think some of the documenation for spectrum needs to be addressed.
I just built a redhat 7 spectrum 10.0.1 and had the same issue. Everything requires a support call to accompish.
I am installing cabi 4.1 sp3 and believe it or not the installation from one of the CA communities
is better than the official documentation!! If the documentation were better it would save me opening trouble tickets
for everything I try to do with the product. yes I have an open ticket on this installation also
I have also had an open ticket for event and alarm documentation open for several months. The exact way
to customize events and alarms needs clear an concise documentation.
again top notch documentation would save man man hous of support time.
Joseph Ackley to Everyone: @Scott I run my mibs through the SimpleWeb validate before compiling
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Klaus - Yes, you can integrate SOI and Spectrum 10.1.1 with a single JasperServer.
Nagesh Jaiswal to Everyone: @John, Rearding VAIM/SysEdge getting replaced by UIM. I will get back to you with details.
Joseph Ackley to Everyone: @Scott I seems to catch errors very well
robert borowicz to Everyone: @John B - I 2nd that
John S. to Everyone: @Joseph Poutre (moving to UIM because VAIM/SysEdge is trap-based) I understand the idea... But UIM and Spectrum are very similar and with PC in the mix... I'm adding a 3rd full application doint what the other 2 can do - minus an agent ...
Praveen to Everyone: In standalone setup ,whether japersoft also can be installed in same server?
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Nagesh - we were visited by a strategic team exploring VAIM transition
Joseph Ackley to Everyone: @Scott to compile multiple mibs you can use the $SPECROOT/MibDatabase/scripts/BulkMibCompile.sh script
robert borowicz to Everyone: I told them then what we are doing, what we need going forward
Klaus to Everyone: @Mathew. Thanks. Is there a order of configuration. SOI first and then Spectrum?
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Praveen - Sorry, can you clarify your question a bit more?
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Klaus - SOI will be releasing their installer shortly from what I am told. Their installer will be a complete UI install. So I would do SOI first, then Spectrum.
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: @John S. - UIM will replace VAIM/SysEdge. You'll push the robots and build monitoring probes and then turn off SysEdge and VAIM. VAIM should go away.
Klaus to Everyone: @Mathew. Thanks.
from Praveen to Everyone: @mathew -we have spectrum server 10.1 and OC in a same machine whether Japersoft also can be installed in the same machine..
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Joseph - that is my recollection
Scott to Everyone: thanks for the MIB info...
robert borowicz to Everyone: however some customers will NOT allow agent install
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Klaus - SOI Jasper installer went GA yesterday I am told!
robert borowicz to Everyone: rsp probe has challenges
Klaus to Everyone: Yes. I saw that 4.0 CU1
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Praveen - We would not suggest doing that for performance reasons - but it is possible. As long as you are aware of port conflicts.
robert borowicz to Everyone: And in a poll (snmpcollector or rsp) scenario - polling a perf challenged server is dubious
Jason Meader to Everyone: @John in regards to the documentation - we are working on ramping the documentation over the next few months and hope to have better information available. In the wiki docs at the bottom of each page is an area to leave comments. Those comments are actively monitored and reviewed. I would encourage you to post comments on pages that you believe could be better and why.
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Klaus - Great! I plan on testing their installer in house soon - making sure it will all work with Spectrum.
robert borowicz to Everyone: traps from a unhealthy SystemEDGE server still manage to limp out
Klaus to Everyone: @Mathew. Thanks. Please let me know if it was succesful
robert borowicz to Everyone: it would be nice to have VAIM-like control over the running SystemEDGE agent
Matthew Gay to Everyone: @Klaus - Can do! Shoot me your complete email privately here.
Praveen to Everyone: Whether uim affected models ca be viewed in GIS view ?
John S. to Everyone: @ Joseph Poutre Thanks, I understand UIM's concept - We POC'ed it twice (1x as NimSoft) I guess the hang up is... UIM doesnt do Fault Isolation as Spectrum and without VAIM, Spectrum doesnt have the agent/robot.. How about a stripped down UIM just for the robot/agent info to report back to Spectrum...
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Joseph - I consider VAIM and SystemEDGE TWO products
robert borowicz to Everyone: I'm OK with VAIM going away
robert borowicz to Everyone: We have standarized on SystemEDGE traps
robert borowicz to Everyone: The old Empire folks....
John S. to Everyone: @robert borowicz they utilize one another.. VAIM/SPIN and SysEdge... VAIM/SPIM are the managers of the agent
John S. to Everyone: - my take anyway
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: And how often do you lose status changes because a device is in maintenance in Spectrum?
robert borowicz to Everyone: VAIM's policy updates work pretty well for us
robert borowicz to Everyone: 3,500 agents
robert borowicz to Everyone: in some cases we had to change CAM to use TCP
robert borowicz to Everyone: insteads of UDP
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: VAIM has given me agita for years. :-)
robert borowicz to Everyone: so you have the "cache clearing" procedure down pat ?
robert borowicz to Everyone: :-)
robert borowicz to Everyone: UIM vs SystemEDGE
robert borowicz to Everyone: robot code is supposed to be a small footprint
robert borowicz to Everyone: and is
robert borowicz to Everyone: but with a trio of Infra Probes (CDM, Processes, Dirscan or Logmon) not so much
robert borowicz to Everyone: But I will tell you Probes are MUCH easier to configure and customize than SystemEDGE with VAIM
John Bigrow to Everyone: ok I will comment on all the things that are issues.
Scott to Everyone: any info on additional training beyond the classes offered at CA?
Nagesh Jaiswal to Everyone: @Scott, We will get back to on training
robert borowicz to Everyone: More free opportunies - my contractor won't pay for it
robert borowicz to Everyone: :-)
Scott to Everyone: just wiondering if any super users etc published info from their own experiences.
Scott to Everyone: no need Nagesh already attended..
robert borowicz to Everyone: Should but don't...
Steven Guthrie to Everyone: @John S. and all the others interested in UIM-VAIM-Spectrum (and SysEdge too for that matter). We plan to release a Spectrum Gateway Probe for UIM that will enhance the existing Spectrum-UIM integration, particularly in the area of alarming -- i.e. alarms can be shared between the two solutions, Spectrum fault isolation can be applied to UIM alarms, alarms can be closed in one and the other is notified, etc. See Tuesday's webcast for more details on the integration. I believe the other part of your questions could be answered as follows -- while there's not a bare-bones UIM install, to 'replace' VAIM or SPIM you could start with just the UIM Server/App pack and nothing more
Steven Guthrie to Everyone: Hope the above helps
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Steve - is there a SystemEDGE template for snmpcollector yet?
Praveen to Everyone: whether there is any docs for sending alarms through mobile sms or any future plans to have a default option in spectrum itself
robert borowicz to Everyone: there is a SMS probe in UIM
robert borowicz to Everyone: have not looked at it
Chris Scollin to Everyone: @Praveen, if the model supports the Location attribute which the Nimsoft Virtual models do have then yes the Virutal Machine models will be seen in the GIS view.
Nagesh Jaiswal to Everyone: @Praveen, no plans for that in near future in Spectrum
Praveen to Everyone: @Chris i dont think Nimsoft Pingable model have those attribute ,can anyone pls confirm
John S. to Everyone: @Steven Guthrie Thanks for the info.. (UIM Server/App pack and nothing more)
Chris Scollin to Everyone: @Praveen, the NimsoftVMPingable model does have the Location attribute.
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Praveen:
robert borowicz to Everyone: http://docs.nimsoft.com/prodhelp/en_US/Probes/Catalog/smsgtw/3.1/index.htm
John Bigrow to Everyone: is there someone I can contack and talk to them about the documentation?
John S. to Everyone: @robert borowicz = Training.. from my expierience.. CA has a Youtube Channel, various recasts of Webex's and the alike... Not bad thou...
Praveen to Everyone: @Chris ..there is any future plans ..Since UIM and Spectrum is integrated all the models will be Nimsoft pingables ...Wt is solution to have the servers in GIS ..
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: Broader integration question - UIM-Spectrum-SOI. For various reasons our central monitoring system will end up on SOI, with Spectrum and UIM handling most monitoring. We are going to consult directly about building the integration, but in anticipation would we tie UIM to Spectrum and then Spectrum to SOI, or UIM and Spectrum to SOI, or make it a three-way tie? Or would this result in the end of civilization?
Scott to Everyone: @robert Agree much better then what was available 2-3 years ago..
robert borowicz to Everyone: @John S - Been there on Youtube (UIM) but they just don't get me there....
Scott to Everyone: @John agree thet simply scratch the surface...
Chris Scollin to Everyone: @Praveen We will also do host discovery which will discover the UIM robots in SPECTRUM and they also have the location attribute. So those models will also work with the GIS view.
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Joseph - I vote for SOI to Spectrum
robert borowicz to Everyone: Let UIM and Spectrum fight it out among themselves
robert borowicz to Everyone: We've found the Spectrum SOI connector most stable
robert borowicz to Everyone: Fast
Scott to Everyone: would be nice to see 2-3 times a month super in depth issues being presented even in you tube
Praveen to Everyone: @chris ,so only physical devies will support ?
John S. to Everyone: Yes basic.. but free.. The paid trainings are good, but LOTS of info...
robert borowicz to Everyone: SOI in our environment is still somewhat unstable
Nagesh Jaiswal to Everyone: @John, You can send an email to me Nagesh.Jaiswal@ca.com. We can talk on your documentation issues.
Scott to Everyone: I was not impressed with the 2nd class..
robert borowicz to Everyone: I've not looked - but is there better diagnostics on V3 Comms in Spectrum 10?
Chris Scollin to Everyone: @Praveen, No there are two types of discovery Host Discovery and VM discovery. The VM discovery will discover the VCenters and Virtual Machine and the Host Discovery will discover hosts. Also, the spectrumgtw probe will discover devices in SPECTRUM that are part of a global collection in UIM.
robert borowicz to Everyone: exposing why Spectrum is failing to poll a V3 dev?
robert borowicz to Everyone: @Chris - and then make a UIM Group out of the GC?
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: Speaking of SNMPv3 in Spectrum, will you fix the requirement that we restart Spectrum when adding a new SNMPv3 profile? Or has this already been done in 10.1 or 10.1.1?
robert borowicz to Everyone: On V3 comm diags
robert borowicz to Everyone: We've seen Solarwinds discover devs misconfigured in V3
robert borowicz to Everyone: While Spectrum fails
Praveen to Everyone: @Chris I agree the above ...nowadays vm machines are huge ,whether it supports GIS or not ..
robert borowicz to Everyone: Backing up *why* the device is mis-configured from diags is key
robert borowicz to Everyone: (we don't have access to the dev)
robert borowicz to Everyone: BTW - We use "auth/priv" here
Chris Scollin to Everyone: @Joseph, I think the best option for using SOI, SPECTRUM, and UIM would be to integrate SPECTRUM and UIM and use the SPECTRUM SOI connector. The alarms between UIM and SPECTRUM would be synced and instead of getting two alarms one from UIM and one from SPECTRUM if you had both you would only get one alarm.
Jason Meader to Everyone: @Rob - there haven't been any changes to detecting v3 misconfigurations
robert borowicz to Everyone: Thanks Jay
Jason Meader to Everyone: @Joe - yes, this was fixed in 10.0
Jason Meader to Everyone: you still cannot have duplicate usernames in different v3 profiles though...
Jason Meader to Everyone: we are considering changing that in a future release
robert borowicz to Everyone: Was an Idea a while ago...
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: Thank you @Chris, and THANK YOU @Jason since we are starting to roll out v3.
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: 10 minute warning... please submit final questions
robert borowicz to Everyone: Spectrum is good at adhering to RFC's
Chris Scollin to Everyone: @Joseph. The spectrum gateway probe will allow you to create a global collection in SPECTRUM and those devices will be created in UIM as well.
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: @Chris - I did see the recent presentation on Spectrum 10.1.1, and we do plan to migrate to that version soon after we get up to 10.1. We have a test SOI and a test UIM and will follow your advice to tie them together. For our production build we plan to consult directly with CA Support about the proper build to replace our VAIM/SysEdge.
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: In case you are new to office hours... the transcripts from this 1 hour chat session will post to the community generally within 24 hours. if any questions are missed in this chat session we will circle back. Remember, you can continue any discussions or start new discussions in the community
robert borowicz to Everyone: Thank you Melissa
Jiangang to Everyone: is someone already change the Spectrum Tomcat to the available Apache in version 10.x? does it solved the security complaints about the webclients?
Jiangang to Everyone: Is it necessary to change the tomcat to apache in Spectrum OneClick for security reason or security improvement?
Jason Meader to Everyone: @Jiangang - I believe you are talking about modsecurity -- which we started supporting with 10.1
Jiangang to Everyone: Yes
Jiangang to Everyone: can we use extra apache-only web-server to substitue the apache in OC?
Jason Meader to Everyone: unfortunately no
Jiangang to Everyone: and is it an option for the version 10.x-Architecture?
Jason Meader to Everyone: only 10.1 and above
from Jiangang to Everyone: Many thank. It is appreciated if I can get some documents about modsecurity. Thanky and bye.
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: @Jiangang - we will get in touch with you off line...
Jiangang to Everyone: many thanks.
Jason Meader to Everyone: can you send Nagesh email
Jason Meader to Everyone: and he can send you modsecurity info
Jason Meader to Everyone: cheers
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: Thanks Everyone for joining Office Hours ! We hope you found this session useful.
Joseph Poutre to Everyone: Thank you, this was a useful session.
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: @Joe, great !
Praveen to Everyone: Thanks all
Scott to Everyone: Thanks need more with monthly web cast on advanced training subjects like new features etc...
Melissa Potvin (CA) to Everyone: @Scott, duly noted... will take your feedback back to the team