Customizing Asset Management › Virtual Hosts › AIX › IBM Hardware Management Console (HMC) Configuration Script › Windows Agent Configuration

Windows Agent Configuration

Configuration of a Windows agent on IBM HMC requires performing the following steps:

• Create a uamuser account on the HMC.
• Establish a trusted key relationship between the Windows agent and HMC using the uamuser account.

Creating the trusted key relationship requires changing an HMC file by editing it on the Windows agent host. An SCP utility is necessary to transfer the file between the hosts. A suitable utility to do this is the PSCP client, which is another utility from PuTTY/Plink. PSCP can be obtained from the PuTTY/Plink website, www.chiark.greenend.org.uk.

To create a ‘uamuser’ account

1. Log in to the HMC as an administrator (or use an SSH command run as an administrative user).
2. Add a user called "uamuser" to the HMC using one of the following commands:

   For HMC version 4 or greater, enter:

   mkhmcusr -u uamuser -a hmcoperator -d UAM user
   

   For older HMC versions, enter:

   mkhmcusr -u uamuser -a sysadmin -d UAM user
   

   To use Plink to perform this step, enter:

   "C:\Program Files\CA\DSM\Agent\units\00000001\uam\plink" -ssh hmc-admin-user@hmc-host mkhmcusr -u uamuser -a hmcoperator -d UAM user
   

   The hmc-admin-user variable represents the name of the HMC administrative user with rights to create new users, and hmc-host represents the host name or IP address of the HMC to which you need the Windows agent to connect.

To establish a trusted key relationship between the Windows agent and HMC

1. Generate a public/private SSH key pair, for example, by using PuTTYgen or another SSH tool.
2. Use an empty passphrase for the private key.
3. Install the public key into the authorized key file for the uamuser on the HMC. To do this:
   1. Copy the key file from the HMC server to the Windows asset management agent host to edit it using an SCP client. For example, with PSCP the command line is as follows:

      pscp -scp uamuser@hmc-host:/home/uamuser/.ssh/authorized_keys2 C:\Temp\authorized_keys2
      

   2. Edit the C:\Temp\authorized_keys2 file (to continue our example). Append to this file a line containing the public key generated above.

      Important! Keep the file in Unix format; do not convert to DOS.

   3. Upload the modified file to the HMC server, using the following command, for example:

      pscp -scp C:\Temp\authorized_keys2 uamuser@hmc-host:/home/uamuser/.ssh/authorized_keys2
      

4. Save the private key in a safe location (for example, “C:\Program Files\CA\DSM\Agent\uamkey.txt”).
5. Specify this key file in the collect task dialog where it prompts for the “SSH Key Location”.