Knowledge Article: ID W0010004 - (Windows) IBM Director Platform Agent Services return no results for hardware component health queries

Description

IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services return no results for hardware component health queries.

IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services, a basic subset (Level 1) of IBM Director Agent, provide basic platform management functionality, such as hardware component discovery/inventory, health state reporting, and more, by communicating with system firmware (BIOS or UEFI) and/or management controllers like BMC (Baseboard Management Controller), RSA-II (Remote Supervisor Adapter), etc., through device drivers or operating system APIs.

Besides platform-specific hardware component instrumentation, IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services also contain an SLP (Service Location Protocol) agent, an SSL (Secure Socket Layer) enabled CIMOM (Common Information Model Object Manager) on Linux, or a set of CIM mapping libraries to WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) on Windows.

Hardware component health query is one of the APIs that IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services provide through WMI. It can be used to detect chronic health problems of hardware components, or to detect health problems that took place when health alerts were not being monitored. It is one of the basic functionalities IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services provide.

Causes

When IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services do not return results for component health queries, there might be integrity problems of the internal data structures that IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services maintain.

Implications

When IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 Services are crippled to such a level, most the platform component instrumentations would also be drastically reduced. To ensure a healthy computing environment, the root cause of the problem should be diagnosed and resolved as soon as possible.

Resolutions

1. Clean up IBM Director Platform Agent's runtime environments: (1) uninstall the IBM Director Platform Agent^*1, (2) run Director Clean tool and (3) reinstall IBM Director Platform Agent^*1. This would bring the IBM Director Platform Agent^*1 to a refresh and clean state. For information about Director Clean tool, see the "Additional information" section below.
2. Check Windows event logs for anything suspicious, and then consult the "Additional information" section for further troubleshooting issues with IBM Director Platform Agent^*1.
3. Upgrade to the latest release of IBM Director Platform Agent^*1. The latest version may contain fixes that are applicable to the issues of focus. See the "Additional information" below for the download location.

Additional information

• Troubleshooting with System Management software
• Downloading System Management software and other software components
• About Director Clean tool

---

Footnote *1 - About IBM Director Platform Agent

IBM Director Version	Director Platform Agent name
6.2.x	Director Platform Agent or Director Common Agent
6.1.x	Director Platform Agent or Director Common Agent
5.20.x	Director Core Services (also called Level-1 Agent) or Director Agent (also called Level-2 Agent)