Managing NerveCenter - Managing SNMP Settings - Overview of NerveCenter SNMP v3 Support -
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Overview of NerveCenter SNMP v3 Support

NerveCenter support for SNMP v2c (community-based SNMP v2) and v3 includes new data types and enhanced security for communication. SNMP v1 and v2c rely on community names for authentication. SNMP v3 enhances authentication and expands its services to include privacy. SNMP v3 expands on the earlier concept of MIB views to control access to management information. SNMP v3 uses a View-based Access Control Model (VACM) to determine the level of access a user has for viewing MIB data.

Following are highlights of NerveCenter support for SNMP v2c/v3:

• Before NerveCenter can discover SNMP v3 agents on nodes, the nodes must have an initial user configured for discovery.
• NerveCenter communicates (sends polls) with an SNMP v3 agent on behalf of a specified NerveCenter user in a defined context. Before NerveCenter can poll SNMP v3 agents, the agents must be configured to support the NerveCenter user and context. By default, the user name is NCUser and the context is NCContext, though you can change both in NerveCenter.
• NerveCenter supports three security levels for communicating with SNMP v3 agents. By default, NerveCenter sets the security level to noAuthNoPriv, which means the v3 agent sends and receives messages without authentication or encryption.
• The authentication and privacy protocols require specialized keys, called authentication and privacy keys. These keys are generated from corresponding passwords. You can change these passwords in NerveCenter, thereby changing the keys. When changing keys in NerveCenter, you can command NerveCenter to update the key changes on all nodes.
• NerveCenter supports either HMAC-MD5-96 (MD5) or HMAC-SHA-96 (SHA) as authentication protocol and CBC-DES as the privacy protocol. The default authentication protocol for NerveCenter is MD5. If you change the authentication protocol on an SNMP v3 agent, you must likewise change the protocol used by NerveCenter to manage the corresponding node in its database.
• A node must have SNMP version information before NerveCenter can poll the node or process a trap from the node. NerveCenter can discover the version of a node automatically or manually. If auto-classification is enabled, then a newly added node (discovered from a trap, added from a platform such as HP OpenView, imported from another NerveCenter) will be classified at the highest level possible.

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  Note    Auto-classification is disabled when you install NerveCenter. You must enable this feature before NerveCenter can classify nodes added to its database.

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• The trap source specified during installation can be changed to MSTrap, OVTrapD or NerveCenter. Changing the trap source requires stopping and starting the related applications (e.g., OVTrapD) and restarting the NerveCenter Server.
• SNMP v3 operations are logged to a file so that you can follow the progress of v3 activities. The log includes information about activities (e.g., a key change initiated by the user) as well as errors that occur while NerveCenter attempts to perform the activities.
• NerveCenter ships with behavior models that provide the status of various applications monitored by the SNMP Research CIAgent.

  For complete details about these and all behavior models, refer to the Behavior Models Cookbook.