Proper SA deployment

[hpooStudent]

hi we are in process of setting up HPSA in our enviroment like to get some views and experience sharing on how to get started. 

Problem:
We have HPSA software policy with scripts to perform patching for agents running on servers, these agents can be montoring agents, job control agents, backup agents etc. which are reporting to different managing hubs. from the HP team which is onsite they suggest that we should "hardcode" the managing hubs ip information in all the patching policy scripts which i don't quite agree. 

i am thinking more using "device group" to group the devices and setup different set of attributes which will inherit from the device group.  ie servers in malasyia should have attributes of monitoring hub in mayalsia.  when the software policy is used to perform installaion of the agent it will call the attribute in the script to get the managing hub ip/hostname. like to check if there is any other methods to achive what we need to do? any  help will be greatly appreciated. 

server inherite custom attributes

[SPierce1]

I agree with you.  Those values should absolutely NOT be hardcoded in scripts.  Using custom attributes will allow you much more flexibility in the long run. 

We do this now and in cases where the custom attribute inheritance does not match the user's needs, they can always override the value of the attribute at the server level.

[hpooStudent]

hi Spierce thanks for your reply. like to chekc in your case do you integrate with HPOO? 
or most of the time if possible would you be able to share how your side does the inheritance in more detail. ie group by country, products. 

[hpooStudent]

hi in my mind we have 2 methods to do it , 1 soft by Environment then  Region, 2 Region then Environment  what are the pros and cons. Any suggestions. 

1) Environment -> Region

PROD (AntiVirusShared-PROD)

     - Monitoring-Malaysia-Hub-PROD, CMDB-Malaysia-Hub-PROD
     - Monitoring-Singapore-Hub-PROD, CMDB-Singapore-Hub-PROD

UAT (AntiVirusShared-UAT)

     - Monitoring-Malaysia-Hub-UAT, CMDB-Malaysia-Hub-UAT
     - Monitoring-Singapore-Hub-UAT, CMDB-Singapore-Hub-UAT

DR …

2) Region -> Environment

Singapore

      PROD
               - Monitoring-Malaysia-Hub-PROD, CMDB-Malaysia-Hub-PROD, 
               - Monitoring-Singapore-Hub-PROD, CMDB-Singapore-Hub-PROD

      UAT
               - Monitoring-Malaysia-Hub-UAT, CMDB-Malaysia-Hub-UAT, AntiVirusShared-Hub-PROD
               - Monitoring-Singapore-Hub-UAT, CMDB-Singapore-Hub-UAT,AntiVirusShared-Hub-UAT 
      DR ...

Malaysia

     PROD

      UAT

      DR

[SPierce1]

The order of inheritance is determined by SA.    See the SA 10.60 Admin guide for the section titled "Search Order for Custom Attributes".

How you create your device groups and apply the custom attributes will be based on the needs of  your specific environments,  application being deployed and/or the purpose of the custom attribute.

For instance, in some cases the custom attribute may contain the email address of the server admin team for that server.  In that case (for us) the custom attribute is placed at the SA Customer level and is inherited by all managed servers in that customer.   In another instance, for a backup tool, there are device groups for each physical location where we have servers, in that case the custom attribute is at populated at the device group level.

Essentially, the location of each custom attribute is determined on a case-by-case basis.   Keeping in mind that it can always be overriden at the device level.

Hope this helps!