Seed systems serve as the starting point for building the IP Manager topology. Routers and switches are good seed system candidates because their MIBs contain many addresses and much information about additional systems in the network.
By using manual discovery without autodiscovery, the IP Manager will discover just the seed systems. The seed systems are presented to the IP Manager as entries in a seed file, rather than being presented individually by using the Add Agent command. A comprehensive seed file can only be created if the network topology information is complete and accessible. The Smarts IP Manager User Guide provides information on the Add Agent command.
The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) Publication 140-2 is a U.S. government computer security standard governing cryptographic modules and is required for any software purchased by the US government and US military. FIPS 140 mode allows you to use only SNMPv1, SNMPv2c, and SNMPv3 except MD5 and DES authentication protocols. If you run SNMPv1 or SNMPv2c, then FIPS 140 mode has no impact. If you are using encryption, then you must use a certified encryption library and only certain encryption routines. When you discover an SNMPv3 device, you need to select the option “V3” in the “Add Agent” window. The “Authentication Protocol” option lists only SHA and not MD5 and the “Privacy Protocol” option lists only AES and not DES. This is because MD5 and DES are not supported in FIPS 140 mode. When you discover SNMPv3 devices with MD5 and DES protocol as seed, the devices go to the Pending List and display as “Invalid” or “Unsupported SNMP V3 protocol”.
“Support for FIPS 140-2 in IP 9.0” section in the Smarts Installation Guide for SAM, IP, ESM, MPLS, and NPM Managers and the Smarts IP Manager Release Notes provide more information on the FIPS 140 mode implementation.
In situations where the network topology information is incomplete, unavailable, or constantly changing, manual discovery is combined with autodiscovery. The seed file can be much smaller because the seed systems that are specified for manual discovery also serve as a starting point for autodiscovery. Autodiscovery automatically discovers the managed network from the seed systems.
For manual discovery, or manual discovery that is combined with autodiscovery, you create a seed file by editing the BASEDIR/smarts/conf/seedfile template in the IP Manager installation area. The Smarts IP Manager User Guide provides the procedure for creating seed files.
Manual discovery can be used to discover SNMPv1, v2c, or v3 systems in IPv4 or IPv6 networks.
