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Before installing RAMS or Traffic Analysis, make sure that your system meets the following minimum requirements:

Supported Hardware Platform in descending list of preference:

1. DL 380 G6
2. DL 360 G6
3. DL 380 G5
4. DL 360 G5
5. DL 380 G4
6. DL 360 G4p
7. DL 360 G4
8. DL 360 G3

NOTE: Starting with the release of RAMS 8.01, the hardware component requirements specified in the hardware support matrix must be adhered. Problems related to inadequate hardware configuration which do not follow the recommended guidelines will not be supported.

IMPORTANT: Consider your disk space requirements and fault tolerance needs and ensure that all available physical drives are installed before powering up the HP ProLiant server for the first time.

Starting with the RAMS 8.01 release, the Flow Collector is only supported on the DL 380 G5, DL 360 G6, and DL 380 G6 hardware platform. RAMS will require two logical drives be configured for a Flow Collector unit - the first logical drive must be set at RAID 1 + 0, the second logical drive set at RAID 0. If you have an existing Flow Collector unit running a pre-8.0 software version, you must re-configure the server with two logical volumes and install the 6.1 software version from a CD image. Failing to do so can cause unexpected behavior. Cases reported as such will not be supported.

When using a DL 380 G6 or DL 360 G6 hardware platform as the Flow Collector unit, it is required that the HP RAMS Flow Collector HiCap SW LTU license be purchased and installed.

For all non-Flow Collector units, RAMS will only utilize a single logical drive as configured on the ProLiant DL380/360 hardware; this means any extra physical disks configured in a second logical drive will be not be recognized by RAMS.

For detailed steps to configure a RAMS 8.12 Flow Collector, it is recommended that you use a HP Proliant SmartStart CD (shipped with the server). The SmartStart CD provides a more comprehensive Array Configuration Utility interface. See to instructions in the RAMS Appliance Setup Guide.

The following describes a quick way to configure a single logical drive.

During the initial power-up of a new server, an auto-configuration process uses all of the physical drives on the HP Smart Array controller to set up a single logical drive. The default RAID (fault tolerance) level used for the logical drive depends on the number of physical drives as listed below:

• 1 drive = RAID 0
• 2 drives = RAID 1 +0 (Mirrored set, total disk space* is the size of smallest disk)
• 3 or more drives = RAID 5 (Striped set with 1 drive used for parity, parity drive is not included in total disk space*)

* The available disk space is ~5% less than the disk's reported size. Every physical drive in an array will have the usable capacity of the smallest drive in the array.

NOTE: Multiple drives configured as a RAID 0 striped set will provide maximum disk space but will NOT provide any fault tolerance. If you install more than one drive intended for maximum disk space usage, i.e., not for fault tolerance, you MUST configure to use RAID 0 or the hardware will default to RAID 1 +0.

During the initial hardware boot sequence, you have the opportunity to accept the default logical drive configuration as shown above, or you can create the logical drive based on your drive space and fault tolerance needs. Watch for the following message during the boot process:

Slot 0 HP Smart Array Controller

Press <F8> to run the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays Utility

Press <F7> to Accept the default configuration - 2 drives in RAID 1 +0

Refer to the HP Smart Array Controller Reference Guide for configuration options and details.

IMPORTANT: Make sure the logical drive is configured as needed before installing RAMS. Any changes to the logical drive configuration, e.g., adding drives or changing the RAID level, will require a reload of the RAMS software and a restore (from backup) of the RAMS configuration and databases.

• RAMS 8.12 uses a licensing version different from RAMS 5.x. For this reason, supported migrations of previous versions of RAMS (5.x) license keys must be migrated ( http://webware.hp.com/ ) for use in RAMS 8.12.
• A software update from 5.x version of a Flow Collector to the 6.5 software version in RAMS 8.12 without reconfiguring the hardware minimally with two logical drives is not supported. See text in the above "Hardware Requirements" section for more information.
• After you update from 5.x to 8.12, if you ask to revert to the alternate software and OS, you will receive a warning that the appliance is reset to factory defaults. If you choose to go ahead, all recording configuration, databases, user accounts, etc., are deleted.
• When updating to a new software release, update the master unit first, and let it finish coming up after the reboot before rebooting the client units.
• When updating from pre-8.01 versions, any custom configurations done for the alerts in the previous versions will also have to be manually migrated. This is required since the PD-ROUTE_EXPLORER MIB mib-tree structure has been changed in order to provide a streamlined, smaller set of well-understood, concise alerts in the 8.01 version. Consequently RAMS SNMP trap OIDs from the RAMS 8.01 release are not compatible with previous versions of RAMS.
• Software update to software version 8.12 is only supported from 5.5 releases; updating from pre-5.5 requires updating to 5.5 first. [10535]
• When updating from a 5.x software version, the databases are automatically renamed with a "Pre60X" prefix because the database table structure has changed. The older databases can still be viewed, but recording to them is not allowed.
• When updating the software from a pre-8.01 software version release, the existing accounts configured on each unit will be transferred into the new local authentication server running on that unit. To switch to a single authentication server on the master unit, a common shared secret must be configured on the master and each client unit.
• After Patch 3 installation, you must manually deploy the updated trap configuration file for RAMS 8.12. The file is present at the following location on the NNM server after installation : <install dir>/newconfig/HPOvNmsEvent/ directory. However, the file is not deployed.

To deploy trap configuration, follow these steps:

1. Copy the nms-spi-rams-nnm-install.nnm file from <install dir>/newconfig/HPOvNmsEvent/ directory to <install dir>/nonOV/jboss/nms/server/nms/deploy/ directory and rename the file to nms-spi-rams.nnm.This adds the new trap definitions.
2. You must now change the existing trap configuration manually. Compare and change the trap configuration as listed in the following table:
   


Changes in messages for existing RAMS trap table

Note : The changes are highlighted in Bold.

Trap Name	OID	Old message	New Message
rexAdjStateUp	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.5	Adjacency state Up in $4 for src $5 dest $6 srcType $13 destType $14	Adjacency state Up in $4 for src $16 dest $18 srcType $13 destType $14
rexAdjStateDown	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.6	Adjacency state Down in $4 for src $5 dest $6 srcType $13 destType $14	Adjacency state Down in $4 for src $16 dest $18 srcType $13 destType $14
rexAdjStateFlap	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.7	Adjacency state Flap in $4 src $5 dest $6 srcType 13 destType $14 flap count-$15 threshold-$16 duration-$17	Adjacency state Flap in $4 src $19 dest $21 srcType 13 destType $14 flap count-$15 threshold-$16 duration-$17
rexPathChange	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.8	Path Change for $4 from src $5 to dest $8/$9 newMetric-$12 : newHops-$14 : oldMetric-$11 : oldHops-$13	Path Change for $4 from src $5 to dest $16/$17 newMetric-$12 : newHops-$14 : oldMetric-$11 : oldHops-$13
rexPrefixStateUp	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.9	Prefix $5/$6 Up announced by node $8	Prefix $11/$12 Up announced by node $8
rexPrefixStateDown	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.10	Prefix $5/$6 Down announced by node $8	Prefix $11/$12 Down announced by node $8
rexPrefixStateFlap	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.11	Prefix Flaps $5/$6 announced by node $8 with flap count-$10 : duration-$12 : threshold-$11	Prefix Flaps $14/$15 announced by node $8 with flap count-$10 : duration-$12 : threshold-$11
rexPeeringStateUp	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.12	Peering is Up between $5 and RAMS appliance $8 in $4	Peering is Up between $5 and RAMS appliance $11 in $4
rexPeeringStateDown	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.13	Peering is Down between $5 and RAMS appliance $8 in $4	Peering is Down between $5 and RAMS appliance $11 in $4
rexPeeringStateFlap	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.14	Peering Flaps between $5 and RAMS appliance $8 in $4 with flap count-$10 : duration-$12 : threshold-$11	Peering Flaps between $5 and RAMS appliance $14 in $4 with flap count-$10 : duration-$12 : threshold-$11
rexASPathChange	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.15	AS Path changed for prefix $5/$6 : new ASPathLength-$8 old ASPathLength-$7	AS Path changed for prefix $10/$11 : new ASPathLength-$8 old ASPathLength-$7
rexBgpRedundChange	.1.3.6.1.4.1.8083.1.1.12.3.18	BGP Redundancy changed in $4 for prefix $5/$6 from Baseline-$7 : CurrHops-$8 : Threshold-$9	BGP Redundancy changed in $4 for prefix $11/$12 from Baseline-$7 : CurrHops-$8 : Threshold-$9

---

• Important: RAMS integration with NNM
  • Since the RAMS 8.01 release, the integration of RAMS is with the NNMi series alone. The integration of RAMS 8.01 and upwards with the NNM 7.x series is not supported.
  • No separate NNM Integration Module is available for RAMS 8.01,RAMS 8.10, RAMS 8.11, and RAMS 8.12 apart from the integration that is part of the NNMi series.
  • Special instructions for NNMi integration with RAMS 8.12
    • The RAMS 8.11 release includes multiple changes to the trap formats. For integrating NNMi with RAMS 8.x, you must install the NNM 8.1x Patch 3 when upgrading to RAMS 8.11 and above. The trap integration does not work as expected if you do not install the NNM 8.1x Patch 3 when upgrading to RAMS 8.11 and above.
      The procedure to change and deploy the updated trap configuration is described in the Upgrading to RAMS 8.12 section.
• Reverting to RAMS version 5.5 from RAMS 8.01, RAMS 8.10, RAMS 8.11 or RAMS 8.12 hangs at grub
  

  This requires the deletion and recreation of the logical drive. The steps to perform that are detailed below:

  • During the boot sequence, the following message would appear:
    

    Slot 0 HP Smart Array Controller

    Press <F8> to run the Option ROM Configuration for Arrays Utility

    Press < F7> to Accept the default configuration - 2 drives in RAID 1 +0

    At this point,

    • Press F8 to enter the array configuration utility.
    • Delete the existing logical drives first.
    • Create a new single logical drive containing the 2 disks.
    • Reboot the system and proceed with the RAMS 5.5 installation.
• The OSPF route calculation of RAMS conforms to RFC2328 and assumes "RFC1583Compatibility" is disabled, so the path chosen from one ABR to another ABR in the same area will be within that area even if there is a lower-metric path through the backbone. Since some routers enable RFC 1583 compatibility by default, the actual path may differ. A future release will support a configuration option to enable RFC 1583 compatibility. [1897]
• If the Route Recorder is configured as a BGP peer with a Cisco router, and the router is configured to send MPLS L3 VPN routes, but you disable MP-BGP support of unicast IPv4 routes (AFI 1, SAFI 1), the BGP peering will constantly reset. [12124]
• In Path Reports, the table All Paths by Destination may show a "Reachable by" count of 1 when the drill-down would show many source routers able to reach the destination. [12163]
• In the RIB Browser and RIB Comparison for an OSPF or ISIS domain, the number of down links reported in the table may be fewer than the number shown when the links are listed from the context menu. [12171, 12295]
• Path Reports for IPv6 networks will show that some paths are incomplete because to reach the destination requires IPv6 connected interface information. That information is not collected yet. [12452]
• The default IPv6 prefix ::/0 is being shown as ::/255 in Events table operations such as Add Prefix. [12474]
• In Traffic Reports -> Top Changes, the context menu on the drill-down button may not appear after sorting a column. The workaround is to select a cell from another column. [12506]
• Consolidation of router nodes on the map may be incorrect when starting a fresh database with BGP, IGP and Static topologies all at once. This problem can be avoided by starting all but the Static recording and letting the full BGP and IGP topologies be recorded, then starting Static Recording separately. Consolidation may also be incorrect if the same interface address is configured on more than one router. [12238, 12578, 12589,12632]
• The Prefix filter on the IPv6 prefixes table does not match correctly when the "less specific" option is chosen. [12585]
• In the XML RPC API, the method api_mp_list_paths requires the source address to be specified in the form of a prefix now; that is, with both an address and a mask. This is consistent with the specification in the Developer's Guide, but earlier releases were more lenient and would accept just an address without the mask.
• In 8.x, the Recorder Configuration allows only a single top-level administrative domain to be created. Users who need multiple domains to configure different portions of their network should create one top-level domain and then subdomains under it. For existing configurations that already contain more than one top-level administrative domain, only the lexicographically first of those domains can have alerts configured. If a recorder client that already contains some configuration is added, that configuration will be pulled up to the master, possibly creating a new top-level domain. This might cause a problem if it comes first.
• If a client unit fails and must be replaced, before adding the replacement unit as a client of the master unit, you must stop replication on the master unit. Then after adding the client, start replication again. This will rename the replicated database on the master and start replicating anew from the database on the replacement client.
• The last TCP ACK packet sent in response to an XML RPC API query sometimes may have a malformed TCP header, causing the user's client to retransmit FIN/ACK packets until giving up. All the data is transferred successfully before this. [8832]
• The latest version (8.2) of the StarNet X-Win32 X Window Server for MS Windows causes progress register dialogs to be left on the screen. As a workaround, the link provided on the RAMS system web server Support page will access the 8.0 version. [8946]
• After installation of the VPN Customer Reports license, it is likely that the query server might not work for the VPN Customer Report API's. Hence, it is recommended that the Modeling Engine be rebooted in order to rectify this problem.
• If the VNC server was not stopped prior to updating from a 5.x version, the VNC "started" state is retained after the update to 8.10 version. If the RAMS GUI is opened via VNC display 1 soon after the update completes, the RAMS GUI will display a " No valid GUI and router count license" error message. The fix is to stop and restart the VNC server. Note: VNC displays 2 and higher do not exhibit this behavior.

Following are selected fixes and enhancements since RAMS 8.11 release.

• The rules were improved for consolidating different BGP and IGP protocol instances for the same router into one node on the map. The algorithm can now consider IGP instances further away in the recorder configuration hierarchy without incorrectly consolidating a BGP node with an IGP node that is already associated with a different AS. [13145]
• The "Assign BGP ASs to Routers" table now includes routers that have only a Static instance and no IGP so that these may be configured as to whether they are running BGP routing. [13006]
• When loading just a Static topology, the time is now set to the current time and the time updates when in Monitoring Mode as it should, whereas before the time was set to an earlier time and did not update. [12744]
• Implemented a low memory check in Flow Record Browser to avoid crashing due to running our of virtual memory space. The GUI will "Pause" fetching of flow records when the application is running low on memory. Later, "Resume" will be allowed to proceed only if some memory has been freed from other uses (such as closing other reports). [12740]
• In Planning mode, when adding a BGP peering, it is now possible to configure the "next hop self" attribute for the peering. [13064]
• When resolving a BGP route, infinite recursion could occur when it should have stopped on a connected route to a loopback interface. The recursion is now terminated correctly and the path is shown correctly. [13065]
• The Static topology model now accommodates the case where two routers are connected by multiple physical links. These are displayed as multiple tabs in the link info panel, as for other protocols. [13087]
• In earlier 8.x releases, tables that displayed EIGRP prefixes were missing the indication of External prefixes in the Attributes column due to a change made for internationalization. This is fixed. [13104]
• A crash could occur in the GUI and in daemons that load the routing topology model for large BGP topologies. This was fixed by changing the processing of one component of the data to be incremental. [13066]
• The GUI could crash when using the Edit IPv4 Traffic Flows function in Planning mode or upon opening a topology where Static nodes and nexthops need to be consolidated in certain cases. These bugs are fixed. [12926, 12977]
• Selection of the default layout name in Options -> Map was made easier and less confusing by invoking the layout dialog. [12811]
• A crash in the GUI that occurred when undoing all edits in Planning mode has been fixed. [12907]
• Changes to the VPN Customer-RT mapping configuration were not affecting running processes because the change indication was not detected. This is now fixed so alert generation and GUI report displays will track these changes. [12950]
• In some cases an OSPF router could be displayed on the map as a pseudonode icon rather than the correct router icon when the router acted as a DR and its router ID was the same as the interface address to the LAN. This is now fixed. [12988]

• A few bugs related to path highlighting in an MPLS WAN network were fixed. In some cases, the path would stop and the entry PE and not cross the VPN. In other cases, a link exiting the VPN from a PE to a CE might be selected for the path even though it was down. [13172, 13288]
• Some MPLS WAN reachability history graphs indicated that prefixes were unexpected when they should have been expected, or vice versa. This is fixed. [13281]
• For configurations with primary and backup VPNs, the counts for the columns "Announcing Any Prefixes" and "Receiving Any Prefixes" in the report "Reachability by VPN" were sometimes incorrect when moving back in time to a point where the backup VPN was active.This is now fixed. [12702]
• A crash due to running out of memory was eliminated in the daemon that generates MPLS WAN reports by flushing unneeded data sooner. [12946]
• If the only clue we have for finding a path across an MPLS WAN is a site AS in the resolved BGP route's AS path, then the path is now shown through all of that AS's CEs as exit CEs from the WAN even in the absence of a route advertised to the VPN, rather than indicating no route. [12511]
• For configurations with primary and backup VPNs, the counts for the columns "Announcing Any Prefixes" and "Receiving Any Prefixes" in the report "Reachability by VPN" have been corrected to be the ones for the shown VPN. In addition, when calculating the number of sites participating in the reachability ranges, sites connected to the VPN via inactive connections are now included. [12702]
• A crash in the RouteAnalyzer (alerts) daemon could occur when the MPLS WAN site or VPN configuration was changed to invalidate some VPN/site combinations for which alerts remained configured. This crash is now prevented. [12881]

• When finding a path in an OSPF network where the resolving prefix includes a forwarding address, and if the forwarding address was the interface of a Designated Router, the path would stop at the pseudonode instead of continuing across the link to the DR. This is now fixed. [13022]
• In the List/Find Paths table, when there were multiple recursion levels in the BGP route resolution, the path was correctly but the "Resolved-by Prefix" was displayed incorrectly. The display has been corrected. [12520]
• Incorrect handling of static routes caused a GUI crash while generating Path Reports. This is now fixed. [12970]
• An optimization for OSPF and ISIS route resolution added several releases ago prevented EIGRP route resolution from falling back to an external route when the prefix was present with both internal and external routes. That optimization is now avoided for EIGRP route resolution so backup routes are correctly taken. [12980]

• Several fixes were made in the Update All Units feature: When client units are rebooted at the end of the operation, now the recording status is restored to what it was before the update rather than always starting all recording; some problems with formatting of the Software Update web page are fixed; and several error conditions are now caught correctly and displayed. [6249]
• Configuration of Flow Collectors was failing on units with an option card installed for additional ethernet ports and without a license for the MPLS VPN Traffic feature, with the result that the whole exporter configuration would disappear. This is fixed.[13211]
• The layout of pseudonodes in the map has been improved in two ways. First, when a partial relayout of router nodes is done, the position of pseudonodes that are not connected to those nodes will not change. Second, when two nodes are connected by multiple point-to-point LANs, the pseudonodes for those LANs are spread out so they are not all perfectly on top of one another. However, when there are many such LANs, limit the spread and allow the pseudonodes to overlap rather than taking lots of space on the map. [13019]
• A new feature was added to facilitate updating all units in a distributed system automatically. A new "Update All" button on the software update page of the Master unit will fetch one copy of the software update image and then distribute it to all clients. The script automates the complete process including the stopping of recording and the rebooting of the Master first and then the clients which will resume recording after reboot. [6249]
• The Daily Routing Reports tables for ISIS-IPv6 prefixes have been improved so the Top 5 Flapping IPv6 Prefixes table will now be shown as empty if the number of flaps is zero for all prefixes, and no IPv6 tables are shown for EIGRP or OSPF (not implemented yet). Also the summary count of prefixes is now split into IPv4 and IPv6 prefixes. [12790]
• Passwords entered in the route recorder configuration for authentication (BGP, OSPF, ISIS, LDP) and for router access (EIGRP, SNMP), as well as Archival Configuration, now have a checkbox to control whether the passwords are shown in the clear or obscured. For customers who need to assure that the passwords are never shown, a one-way checkbox on the Users page allows permanently disabling the checkboxes that would show the passwords. [3844, 5124, 12869]
• In the ISIS recorder configuration, the checkbox for disabling the recording of protocol packet events was not effective. Now it works. [12956]
• When recording a BGP confederation in a distributed system (multiple units), the Confederation ID (AS number) is now passed to the client route recorder units when the BGP recorder instance is created so it correctly belongs to the confederation. [12969]

• In api_traffic_links, traffic levels were reported as 32-bit integer values in bits/second that did not provide sufficient range. The XML RPC type of these values has been changed to <double>. [13144]
• In the XML RPC API, an additional "mpname" field has been added to the router struct that appears in calls such as api_mp_links and api_traffic_links to show the same name that is shown for the router node in the GUI. This is to assist with cross-referencing the information in the these calls. [13081]
• The bandwidth value is now set to zero on interfaces created for static NextHops; this avoids small negative values in api_mp_links. [12512]

• In the SNMP trap for some IPv4 alerts, an invalid value 0 was given for the rexAdjSrcInetType or rexAdjDstInetType even though valid IPv4 adjacency endpoint addresses were provided. This is now corrected. [13290]

• Two changes make the EIGRP recorder's parsing of CLI output more tolerant of unusual conditions: the output of the "show ip eigrp topology active" command can sometimes have a line with "active never" instead of "active 00:01:25", so this is now treated as 0; and in case no ACL name is shown on a route redistribution filterline, set the ACL name to "-" to avoid an error. [13329, 13330]
• Rudimentary support for EIGRP in NX-OS switches was added in 8.11, but the information regarding network prefixes included in the routing was not recorded correctly. This is fixed. [13331]
• Two changes were made in the way the EIGRP route recorder issues CLI queries and parses the output to accommodate Cisco 12K routers. Another change in the parsing accommodates routers that emit duplicate "Route not in topology table" messages. [13085,13118, 13113]
• Discovery of the EIGRP topology via router login and CLI output parsing is now protected against misinterpreting text in a router banner message as a command line prompt and therefore inferring the wrong router operating system. [12764]
• Frame relay router interfaces are now recognized as a type of serial interface so that they are treated correctly in the Static topology. [12896]
• Some BGP prefix events were written to the topology database as default IPv6 prefix (::/0) rather than the correct prefix value.This is now fixed. [12918]

• Sorting and grouping of table rows based on an IPv6 address column was not producing the right order. The underlying function for comparing IPv6 addresses has been corrected. [13386]
• The time displayed on the GUI's main map window was not staying in sync with the time displayed on the History Navigator window after animation. Now the two times stay in sync. [13367]
• In OSPF routing, an Area Border Router was incorrectly choosing an area external route that it originated itself and advertised to its non-backbone area rather than choosing the AS external route from the backbone area. Now the backbone route is has higher precedence. [13426]
• On large EIGRP networks, the adjacency between the route recorder and the peer router might drop at the end of the topology exploration due to a long calculation that delayed the Hello processing. That calculation is now segmented. [13460]
• A crash that could occur when the Static information collector was being terminated has been fixed. [12329]
• Generation of traffic reports could fail after the replicate of the Static routing database was trimmed (on a weekly basis) if no events were subsequently recorded so the event table was empty. This empty condition is now accommodated to allow traffic report generation to continue. [13466]
• If alerts were configured with rate limits in a suppression specification, the alerts would permanently cease being issued if the rate limit was exceeded. This is now fixed. [12581]

VPN Demo Portal Readme

A downloadable demonstration of the VPN Portal is available at ftp://hpovrams.external.hp.com/rams/portal/vpnPortal.tar. The installation instructions for the demo is available at ftp://hpovrams.external.hp.com/rams/portal/vpnPortal.readme.