Chapter 5. Getting Started With GMCSTARS Administration

Chapter 5. Getting Started With GMCSTARS Administration
	Part II. Administration Guide

Table of Contents

Contents of the Managers Configuration Member

This chapter will provide the information you will need to create the initial GMCSTARS and VCC configuration. When this section is completed, GMCSTARS will be sending information on highlighted messages to VCC and VCC will be creating alerts using for the messages.

Defining Who To Send Messages To

GMCSTARS must be configured to send messages to VCC servers or other SNMP managers, via SNMP traps. To do this you must add information about the servers to the MANAGERS member of the GMCSTARS.V1R0.PARMLIB partitioned data set.

First, we'll discuss the format of the MANAGERS member. Then we'll discuss how to edit it on the VCC server, should you desire to do this.

Contents of the Managers Configuration Member

The managers member's format is a member of an MVS partitioned data set, with a logical record length, LRECL, of 80 and a record format RECFM, of fixed blocked FB. You don't really need to understand this, but please be aware that the line length of each line in the member is limited to 80 characters and the last 8 are used for a sequence number, effectively limiting your data to 72 characters. The cfgupload command will check that your data meets this criteria.

Comments begin with the first # character on a line and continue to the end of the line.

The data in this member can be upper or lower case.

Manager IP Address

Each manager's IP address must be specified surrounded by […] characters. The IP address can be specified as a “dotted IP address” such as [10.25.123.40], as a host name such as [myvccserver] or as a fully qualified domain address such as [myvccserver.operations.mycompany.com]. cfgupload will check that the managers' addresses can be resolved, but GMCSTARS must be able to resolve the addresses from your MVS system when it runs. If GMCSTARS cannot resolve a manager's address from MVS, a warning message will be output.

The GMCSTARS member of GMCSTARS.V1R0.PARMLIB specifies the default port GMCSTARS will send its traps to as well as the default SNMP community specified. In very rare cases, it may be necessary to override the defaults. In this case, you may specify the port or community for a particular manager.

Port

GMCSTARS is usually configured to send its traps to port 2679, by default. This is different from the normal SNMP port of 162 for technical reasons. If you need to change the port for a particular SNMP manager, specify “port=nnnn” for that manager. For example:

[crow]
[special.server]
port=12321

In this example, manager crow receives its traps on the GMCSTARS default port, while special.server receives its on port 12321.

Community

SNMP packets can be categorized by a “community” qualifier. The normal default community for most SNMP applications, including GMCSTARS, is “public”. If you need to change this for a particular manager, specify “community=xyz”. For example:

[vcc.gbmt.com]
[strange.server.mycompany.net]
community="special"

In this example, manager vcc.gbmt.com will receive its traps addressed to community public. Manager strange.server.mycompany.net will receive its traps addressed to community “special.”

Both port and community can be specified for a manager in any order. For example:

[very.special.manager.mycompany.net]
port=12222                             # This server's traps are at 12222
community="veryspecial"
[strange.server.mycompany.net]
community="special"
port=54321