Configuring Community Directives

Follow the procedures presented in this page to enable EMS access to the DSC and to configure community directives.

Enabling EMS Access

Enabling the EMS access on the DSC modifies the snmpd configuration (snmpd.conf) and adds a new community string, ins_ems, which allows external and internal access to the system to modify the following Object Identifiers (OIDs):

• .1.3.6.1.4.1.1556.17.15.306.1.1.9          this is single interval stats files
• .1.3.6.1.4.1.1556.17.15.306.1.1.11        this is active traps
• .1.3.6.1.4.1.1556.17.15.306.308.316.1  this is the trap host table

The ins_ems community string is the only external access allowed to the system through SNMP commands. This string is read-only, and, therefore, the OID values cannot be modified.

You can enable EMS access using the following methods:

• executing the the initial configuration procedure. For more information about this procedure, see the following references.
  
  
  • for the DSC 8000, refer to Executing the Initial Configuration
  • for the DSC SWe on KVM hypervisor, refer to Executing the Initial Configuration
  • for the DSC SWe on VMware hypervisor, refer to Executing the Initial Configuration (on VMware Hypervisor)  
    
  • for the DSC SWe on OpenStack hypervisor, refer to Executing the Initial Configuration for the DSC SWe (on OpenStack)
    
    
• using the Web UI

To enable EMS access on the Web UI

False Positives Security Vulnerabilities

Third party scans such as the Nessus plugins may report some false positives vulnerabilities such as: 

• SNMP Agent Default Community Name (public)
• SNMP 'GETBULK' Reflection DDoS

The default community names on the SNMP server can be guessed. An attacker may use this information to gain access to the system or cause a denial of service attack by issuing ‘GETBULK’ requests which returns large amount of data. 

To resolve this issue, and reduce public vulnerability so data can be protected, you can change the default community name string. The procedure to perform this task is documented in the following section.

Naming Convention Limitations for Community Strings

You must comply with some naming convention limitations when configuring the ro and rw community strings for the DSC 8000 and DSC SWe. These limitations are as follows.

• community strings are limited to 64 characters for backwards compatibility
  
  
• alphanumeric characters are allowed
  
  
• hyphens and underscores are allowed

Configuring snmpv2 Community Directives

The following procedure provides you with the steps to configure snmpv2 community directives

To configure SNMPv2 community directives

1. From the Main Menu, click IP Networking.
   
   
2. Click SNMP.
      
3. Enter the required information in the SNMPv2 Read Only Community Name and SNMPv2 Read/Write Community Name. 
   
   
4. Click Commit.