Managing NerveCenter - Managing SNMP Settings - Discovery and Initialization of SNMP v3 Agents -
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Discovery and Initialization of SNMP v3 Agents

NerveCenter can discover and monitor nodes with SNMP v1 and v2 agents without knowing anything in particular about the agent beforehand. For nodes with SNMP v3 agents, however, NerveCenter requires certain information before the node can be discovered and managed. The process of obtaining this information is call initialization.

Initialization occurs in two cases:

• After installation, a node must be initialized for NerveCenter to obtain engine information required for polling.
• When a node's version is changed to SNMP v3 from some other version, the node must be initialized.

Before NerveCenter can initialize a node, the SNMP v3 agent must be configured on the node with the poll user, poll context and security level.

• See SNMP v3 security for information about the poll user, poll context, and security level.
• See Configuring an SNMP v3 agent for NerveCenter for configuration details.

Initialization consists of the following:

• Obtaining the snmpEngineID value for the agent. To obtain this information, the agent must be configured with an "initial" user that has a security level of NoAuthNoPriv. See Configuring an initial user for an SNMPv3 agent for details.

  The engine ID is all that's required for discovering an SNMP v3 node.

• Obtaining additional engine information if required for the chosen level of security.

  NerveCenter requires additional engine information when the NerveCenter user has a security level other than NoAuthNoPriv. In this case, NerveCenter must obtain both the snmpEngineBoots and snmpEngineTime values of the SNMP v3 agent. NerveCenter must know the engine ID before it can request the boots and time information from the agent.

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  Note    SNMPv3 specifications makes a provision for allowing completely secure initial configuration of agents wherein an agent need not disclose its snmpEngineID. Network management applications must obtain on their own the snmpEngineID of such agents. NerveCenter cannot initialize or poll such agents.

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