HP OpenView System Administration Handbook [Electronic resources] : Network Node Manager, Customer Views, Service Information Portal, HP OpenView Operations نسخه متنی

2.1 …TO WORK PROPERLY

Network and systems management systems most commonly fail to work properly due to a misunderstanding of how a product actually works and how it behaves when it interacts with parts of the operating system and other management systems within the management domain. The least understood part of the operating system also deserves the most attention and impairs the network and systems management systems from working correctly: the configuration of host name resolution in conjunction with an administrator's unique host-naming convention.

2.1.1 Incorrect Configuration of Hostname Resolution

Organizations can create some pretty unique host-naming schemes, and no matter what those "schemes" may be, they always seem to define one unique host name for every interface. There is nothing wrong with that host-naming scheme itself, it is the misconfiguration within each naming service that most frequently wreaks havoc on network and systems management systems and causes additional configuration problems elsewhere on each system. Appendix B, "Hostname Resolution," covers properly configuring hostname resolution to work with an administrator's unique hostnaming mechanism and prevent misconfiguration. Failure to correctly configure host-name resolution causes missed alarms or messages, event and message correlation, and synchronization.

Proper hostname configuration and resolution is documented in many places, including manual pages as well as other books on the configuration of NFS, NIS, and DNS and BIND. Yet it appears to be totally overlooked by system and network administrators. It is the first configuration item that is checked by any seasoned OpenView consultant before deployment of a network and systems management system. It is one of the first items checked during a call to the HP Response Center for an OVO agent communication problem. The proper configuration of host- name resolution is of the utmost importance for not only the network and systems management system, but for other system commands and processes such as the r-commands and NFS.