In previous blogs we covered how to set up call home on the HMC. That blog included instructions on how to configure the HMC to run in Events Manager mode. Events Manager mode means that all events that are normally called home to IBM automatically must be manually approved before being called home. Why? Well it can be beneficial to know what data is being called home to IBM on behalf of your HMC. It gives you the ability to audit what IBM gets; it also gives you more control over what you send to IBM service so you know when to expect a follow-up. It can also make managing all those events a little easier. So let's start up the Events Manager for Call Home and dig in and reveal some of the benefits that come with using the Events Manager.
Registering Management Consoles
After launching the Events Manager for Call Home from the HMC "Getting Started" page, the first thing you will want to do is add a console to the Registered Management Consoles panel. You will want to ensure that the HMC you are launching the Events Manager for Call Home from can speak to the HMC you are adding to the registered consoles list. We will show you some steps to connect later on.
After the user clicks the Manage Consoles button they will be presented with the "Manage Registered Consoles" panel. This is the panel that allows the user to add and remove consoles from being included in the Events Managers for Call Home main panel.
Clicking the "Add Console" button brings up the "Add Registered Console" panel. The user will be asked to provide an IP or host name, a description, a user name and password for that HMC.
Simply clicking “OK” will test the connectivity to the HMC and return the user to the main Events Manager panel. From there the user can add another HMC by clicking the "Manage Consoles" button again, they can see the console count updated, and they can click "Refresh" to have all the events displayed from the newly added HMC.
Managing Events
The "Events Manager for Call Home" page allows the user to filter the list of events based on three criteria: Approval state, Status, and Originating HMC. Clicking Refresh updates the list after making changes.
Now I can show you some of the nice things the Events Manager for Call Home can enable you to do. At this point you can see if an event has been approved for call home by the "Approval State". You can view the status of the event, the failing and reporting systems. You can right click the event and view the details of the problem, view the list of log files that will be called home with the event, or you can approve the event to be called home which will result in the Events Manager notifying the originating HMC to perform the call home action.
So you think all of this is great, right? You can finally see all those events across all of those HMC, but you are thinking that you really do not want to have to go approve all of those events manually for call home. That's okay, even if you want to use the Events Manager for Call Home as an event aggregation point, you can use it without putting the HMC in events manager mode and it's simply a viewer of events across all the HMC you registered. So enjoy the added benefit of not having to log into all those HMC and don't forget to call those problems home!
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