Hardware Inventory

Meridian can be extended to import Entity-MIB information from SNMP agents to enrich node data. There are two types of Entity-MIBs. The first type is a generic implementation of RFC 4133 ENTITY-MIB. The second type are vendor-specific Entity-MIBs, which some manufacturers provide.

These Entity-MIBs provide dynamic attributes to describe device components. This includes information such as model number, description, serial number, and more. The optional hardware inventory extension of the provisiond service will add these fields to nodes in Meridian.

Installation

To use this feature you have to install the SNMP hardware inventory plugin from the repository.

  • For RPM-based distributions:

    • yum install meridian-plugin-provisioning-snmp-hardware-inventory

  • For Debian-based distributions:

    • apt-get install meridian-plugin-provisioning-snmp-hardware-inventory

Configuration

Once enabled, the hardware inventory plugin collects the ENTITY-MIB::entPhysicalTable of all devices with no additional configuration. To collect inventory from devices that provide additional fields, you can specify which OIDs to use in the configuration file ${OPENNMS_HOME}/etc/snmp-hardware-inventory-adapter-configuration.xml. This file includes support for the CISCO-ENTITY-MIB as a starter example.

Once you have enabled the plugin, the Provisiond service attempts to collect hardware inventory data when it refreshes requisitions. After synchronizing the requisition, you should see a uei.opennms.org/internal/discovery/hardwareInventorySuccessful event to confirm inventory was collected. This event is triggered only when the provisioning adapter detects changed hardware inventory for a node. If there is a problem retrieving or storing the inventory data, a uei.opennms.org/internal/discovery/hardwareInventoryFailed event will be sent instead.

Collecting custom inventory fields

Any MIB column indexed by entPhysicalIndex can be added to the configuration file and the hardware inventory adapter will collect the value and store it for each entity that contains a non-null value for the custom attribute. The hw-extension element lets you group a list of Entity-MIB extensions defined in mibObj elements based on a sysOidMask of a node. If the system enterprise ID of the node matches the sysOidMask defined on the hw-extension, the mibObj entities inside are collected for populating the inventory. When a vendor provides the standard objects on a table other than entPhysicalTable, you can override any of the base attributes by specifying which attribute is to be overridden.

Example of importing custom vendor information
<hw-extension name="CISCO-ENTITY-ASSET-MIB" sysOidMask=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.">
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.1"  type="string" alias="ceAssetOEMString" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.2"  type="string" alias="ceAssetSerialNumber" replace="entPhysicalSerialNum" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.3"  type="string" alias="ceAssetOrderablePartNumber" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.4"  type="string" alias="ceAssetHardwareRevision" replace="entPhysicalHardwareRev" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.5"  type="string" alias="ceAssetMfgAssyNumber" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.6"  type="string" alias="ceAssetMfgAssyRevision" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.7"  type="string" alias="ceAssetFirmwareID" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.8"  type="string" alias="ceAssetFirmwareRevision" replace="entPhysicalFirmwareRev" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.9"  type="string" alias="ceAssetSoftwareID" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.10" type="string" alias="ceAssetSoftwareRevision" replace="entPhysicalSoftwareRev" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.11" type="string" alias="ceAssetCLEI" />
    <mibObj oid=".1.3.6.1.4.1.9.9.92.1.1.1.12" type="string" alias="ceAssetAlias" />
</hw-extension>

In this example, only the nodes that match the sysOidMask .1.3.6.1.4.1.9 (Cisco devices) are candidates to discover the custom mibObj entities defined on the extension group. The definition of ceAssetSerialNumber has been configured to replace one of the base attributes entPhysicalSerialNum so the adapter will know to override the generic Entity-MIB attribute instead of creating a new custom attribute entry.

Viewing collected hardware inventory information

To view inventory information collected for a node, click the "Hardware Info" link on the node’s page in the Web UI. If the node has hardware inventory, Meridian displays all collected fields.

It is also possible to retrieve and update hardware inventory information via the Nodes REST endpoint. See the REST documentation for more information.

Using hardware information in events and notifications

A set of placeholders is available in Meridian to enrich the content of the events, alarms, and notifications. Because of the hierarchical nature of the hardware entities, you must provide two fields to obtain the value of the required attribute. These two fields are either the entPhysicalIndex or the entPhysicalName and the name of the attribute to use.

The entPhysicalIndex guarantees that you always get the same entity. Using entPhysicalName is not always a unique way to identify an entity, depending on the device manufacturer. When using the name, the first entity that matches the given entPhysicalName is used.

Specify a regular expression to validate against the entPhysicalName by prefixing the field with a ~. When using regular expression matching, the first attribute matched is used.

Sample placeholders naming structure:

  • %hardware[{entPhysicalIndex}:{attributeName}]%

  • %hardware[{entPhysicalName}:{attributeName}]%

  • %hardware[~{regexOverEntPhysicalName}:{attributeName}]%

Example event definition
<event>
    <uei>uei.opennms.org/hardware/nodeStatus</uei>
    <event-label>Hardware Information</event-label>
    <descr>
        &lt;p&gt;Hardware information for %nodelabel%.&lt;/p&gt;
        &lt;p&gt;Model Name: %hardware[Chassis:entPhysicalModelName]% &lt;/p&gt;
        &lt;p&gt;Description: %hardware[9:entPhysicalDescr]% &lt;/p&gt;
        &lt;p&gt;Memory Used: %hardware[~^NPE.*:ceExtNVRAMUsed]% &lt;/p&gt;
    </descr>
    <logmsg dest='logndisplay'>&lt;p&gt;Hardware information for %nodelabel%.&lt;/p&gt;</logmsg>
    <alarm-data reduction-key="%uei%:%nodeid%" alarm-type="1" />
</event>

The event definition above uses the following placeholders:

  • %hardware[Chassis:entPhysicalModelName]% to obtain the model name of the Chassis entity based on the entPhysicalName.

  • %hardware[9:entPhysicalDescr]% to obtain the base description of the entity identified with an entPhysicalIndex of 9.

  • %hardware[~^NPE.*:ceExtNVRAMUsed]% to obtain the vendor attribute called ceExtNVRAMUsed for the first entity that matches an entPhysicalName starting with NPE.