Tech Tip: How to determine what devices are supported by CA Spectrum?
CA Spectrum Tuesday Tip by Bill Wolforth, Sr Support Engineer for July 27, 2015
- Products
- Releases
- CA Spectrum:Release:9.2
- CA Spectrum:Release:9.3
- CA Spectrum:Release:9.4
- CA Spectrum:Release:10.0
- Components
The http://ehealth-spectrum.ca.com/devices/html/search_sp.html page can be used to find devices that are supported in Spectrum, what versions of Spectrum they are supported in and at what level of support.
After navigating to the http://ehealth-spectrum.ca.com/devices/html/search_sp.html page, select "SPECTRUM" in the "Select Product Line" field and then use the "Certified Vendors", "Keyword Search" and "System Object Identifier" fields to define your search.
Certified Vendors:
A Certified Vendor is a company, corporation, or organization that manufactures one or more devices that have been certified by SPECTRUM. Selecting a vendor to filter on will limit your search to all devices owned/acquired by the selected vendor.
Keyword Search:
A Keyword Search is used to search the “Device Type Name” field of a device. Entering a keyword to search will limit your search to all devices that contain the specific keyword in the Device Type Name.
System Object Identifier:
System Object Identifier is a sequence of dotted decimal numbers used to identify a particular vendor’s device. For example:
- 1.3.6.1.4.1.9.1.478 identifies the Cisco device Cisco 12810
It is important to note that not all devices will have a unique System Object Identifier. Additionally some devices may not have any System Object Identifier.
To search for a System Object Identifier enter any portion of the desired System Object Identifier into the search box. All devices containing the requested portion will be returned.
Support Level:
The Support Level field indicates the current level of certification support provided by SPECTRUM for this device. There are two levels of certification support available: Simple and Enhanced.
Simple support indicates that the device is modeled using GnSNMPDev. This level of certification provides core SPECTRUM capabilities; including discovery, identification, standard MIB and trap support, standard views, interface modeling and participation in fault isolation and root cause analysis. Please see the description on Universal Device Support for additional details.
Enhanced support is an extension of Simple support. At a minimum, Enhanced certification support indicates that support for this device has been extended with proprietary MIB and trap support. Typical extensions include proprietary OneClick views, CPU and memory device thresholding and serial number support.
Universal Device Support:
SPECTRUM provides out-of-box support for all SNMP compliant devices. This is made available either via a specific SPECTRUM certification (also sometimes referred to as a management module) or via GnSNMPDev certification. Each specific certification includes a unique model type and proprietary support within SPECTRUM to facilitate device management. The GnSNMPDev certification includes standards-based support which can be extended with proprietary support. It is an extremely powerful modeling capability as it allows SPECTRUM to dynamically create device models on-the-fly to manage devices of all classes when a specific certification is unavailable.
GnSNMPDev rapidly queries the device to determine its characteristics and capabilities and creates a model to represent it. GnSNMPDev also creates sub-models to represent each of the standard MIBs supported by the device and each interface/port defined in the standard MIB-II interface table. The application and interface models are then associated with the GnSNMPDev model. This modeling together with standard trap support provides the basic management capabilities for the device.
Devices that are modeled with the GnSNMPDev certification can be used with all SPECTRUM's management tools, including discovery, identification, standard fault, performance and service management. Importantly, GnSNMPDev models participate fully in SPECTRUM's root cause analysis, fault isolation, and downstream alarm suppression algorithms and are thus able to alert users to network and device problems like other SPECTRUM device models.
Utilities are available out-of-the box that allow support to be extended for any device model, including additional MIB and trap support, identification, OneClick views and Watches.
To learn more about extending your GnSNMPDev support, see documentation on Device Type Identification and MIBTools located in “Modeling Your IT Infrastructure” and documentation on Event Configuration located in “Event Configuration User Guide”.