This training course covers monitoring, managing and configuring your edge-to-core network with the HPE Intelligent Management Center software platform (HPE IMC). This course starts with a discussion of how HPE Intelligent Management Center is installed, how devices are added through discovery, and then how they can be viewed. The course also goes through configuration management, along with VLAN management and then explains how HPE Intelligent Management Center is used to manage both firmware and configuration on devices. We also discuss how alarms are received and processed in HPE Intelligent Management Center, along with trap management. Finally, we look at performance management and the Virtualization Resource Management (VRM) component against an ESXi host. The lab exercises are focused around Comware, Aruba Edge (AOS) and Aruba CX Switches, and some Cisco. This course is approximately 40 percent lecture and learning activities and 60 percent hands-on lab activities.

Audience

This course is intended for network or systems administrators, network engineers, and consultants who plan to deploy, manage, monitor, and configure HPE Intelligent Management Center.

Prerequisites:

Learners should have some networking experience to get the most from this training course. They should:

• Understand networking, along with IPv4 addressing
• Have some knowledge of the CLI commands on HPE Aruba Switches (AOS and CX), Comware v7 and Cisco (this knowledge is beneficial, but not required)
• Understand file architecture on Comware and Aruba, including Telnet/SSH, and start up and saved configurations
• Understand SNMP configuration
• Understand traps and how they are configured on the switches

Course objectives

By the end of the course, you should be able to:

• Understand the HPE Intelligent Management Center installation process and how to initially access HPE Intelligent Management Center
• Understand how to add devices into HPE Intelligent Management Center using auto discovery
• Understand the different views in HPE Intelligent Management Center and how they can be utilized
• Understand the Configuration Centre and how it can be used for configuration management
• Understand how alarms and traps are generated in HPE Intelligent Management Center
• Understand how HPE Intelligent Management Center can be used to manage, monitor and configure VLANs.
• Understand how HPE Intelligent Management Center can be used for performance management
• Understand how HPE Intelligent Management Center can be used for virtualization resource management
• Understand how to troubleshoot HPE Intelligent Management Center

Detailed course outline

Module 1: HPE Intelligent Management Center Introduction 

• Introduction
• HPE Intelligent Management Center design features, requirements, and modules
• HPE vLabs access

Module 2: Installation and Initial Access 

• Processes on the HPE Intelligent Management Center server
• How to login to HPE Intelligent Management Center
• Licensing structure
• Difference between an HPE Intelligent Management Center operator and an HPE Intelligent Management Center user
• Operator groups and how they can be mapped to operators
• How to install an HPE Intelligent Management Center module
• How to configure display tiling

Module 3: Adding Devices 

• How to configure devices before you add them into HPE Intelligent Management Center
• How to configure access service templates
• How to use “auto discovery” to add devices to HPE Intelligent Management Center
• How to use “add device” to add devices to HPE Intelligent Management Center
• How to modify device setting in HPE Intelligent Management Center
• How to use “check access settings” and interpret the output
• How to install DBman and backup HPE Intelligent Management Center

Module 4: Trap Management 

• How traps are received and processed by HPE Intelligent Management Center
• How to view and understand traps in HPE Intelligent Management Center
• How traps are filtered in HPE Intelligent Management Center
• How HPE Intelligent Management Center is used to create a trap definition
• How to import MIBS in HPE Intelligent Management Center
• Escalate a trap (event) to an alarm

Module 5: View Management 

• Access and manage the network topology
• Access the IP topology view
• Appreciate the difference between the IP view and IP topology view
• Create a custom view
• Create a port group view
• Create a data center topology

Module 6: Configuration Management 

• How to backup software, define baseline software version and compare
• How to backup, baseline, and compare configurations
• How to schedule backups

Module 7: Alarms and Events 

• Understand the alarm window information
• How alarms are acknowledged and recovered
• How to edit the home screen
• How to cause an event to become an alarm
• Know how HPE Intelligent Management Center can work with edge ports
• How HPE Intelligent Management Center manages and processes MIBs 

Module 8: VLAN Management 

• How to manage global and device VLAN information 
• Know the steps to deploy a VLAN

Module 9: Performance management 

• Describe the types of performance metrics that a network admin can monitor using HPE Intelligent Management Center
• Analyze the performance characteristics being tracked by HPE Intelligent Management Center
• View, interpret, and configure performance widgets in the HPE Intelligent Management Center home window
• Describe the difference between global index settings and individual device monitoring settings
• Configure individual device monitoring settings
• Use topology maps to access device performance metrics
• Configure topology maps to display specific performance metrics
• Describe the difference between global index data and real-time monitoring data
• Configure real-time performance data

Module 10: Virtualization Management 

• An introduction to virtualization
• Adding virtual hosts to HPE Intelligent Management Center
• Using Virtual Resource Manager (VRM)
• An introduction to managing virtual devices in HPE Intelligent Management Center

Module 11: Troubleshooting HPE Intelligent Management Center

• Troubleshoot HPE Intelligent Management Center using various scenarios 
• Know where to look 
• And know what to look for