HP Operations Manager for Windows

Using WMI policies to intercept incoming messages


Whether a message is passed to some notification interface, a trouble-ticket system, or any other location, the configuration within HPOM for Windows is always the same. You will configure a WMI policy and its rules for forwarding messages to notification systems such as email and eternal help desk systems when an instance of the class OV_message has been created on the HPOM management server.

To configure the WMI policy, follow these steps:

  1. In the console tree, select Policy Management Policies grouped by type Windows Management Interface.
  2. Right-click to open the context menu. Select New Policy to open the WMI policy editor.
  3. In the WMI Namespace box, type the namespace name:

    ROOT\HewlettPackard\OpenView\Data

  4. Set the Object type to Instance.
  5. In the Instance class name box, type OV_Message.
  6. In the Type of query field, select Query the intrinsic event for these instances.
  7. For all other fields, keep the defaults.

After specifying these general settings, configure the rules that define which messages should be forwarded:

Note NOTE:
Forwarding all incoming messages will increase the load on the management server and might affect the overall system performance.

To configure WMI policy rules for message forwarding

Follow these steps to specify which messages you want to forward. You can identify these by specifying one or more message attributes. The following example shows conditions which check to see if a message has a severity of 32 (critical) and if the message text starts with 'EXSPI'. The last condition is used to prevent loops.
  1. In the WMI policy editor, select the Rules tab. Click New to open the New rule dialog box.
  2. Use the Condition tab of the Rule dialog box to specify arbitrary conditions to determine which messages should be forwarded.

  3. To create a new rule condition, click Add to open the New condition dialog box.

  4. From the Property name list, select the name of the property to be used to filter messages for forwarding. For example, select Severity from the list.
  5. Select from the Operator list. For example, select ==equal.
  6. In the Specific value to compare box, enter the number 32, which represents the severity level "Critical". The other severity levels are represented by the following number equivalents:

    Major=16
    Minor=8
    Warning=4
    Normal=2
    Unknown=1

  7. Click OK to return to the New rule dialog box, where the condition you just created appears in the list.
  8. Click OK again to return to the Rule tab, where your newly created rule is summarized.
  9. Configure the automatic command using the instructions in Using automatic actions to forward messages.
  10. To prevent loops, see How to prevent loops for details.
  11. After you have created the WMI policy, deploy it to the HP Operations management server (It will not work on any other system).
  12. Send a critical test message (or any other test message which matches the rule configured earlier). The message should show up in the HPOM console as usual and the forwarding command should launch. If something went wrong, an additional error message should appear in the HPOM console. This message would be generated by the WMI policy if the automatic command failed. If no error message appears, check to see if the message was forwarded correctly to the external application.

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