Hardware monitoring via NMS?

[Anon Anon]

I have a large prospect that wants t include hardware monitoring as part of any solution. I have explianed that typically we receive SNMP Trap alerts from the hardware vendor solution e.g. IBM Director, HP SIM, Dell OpenManage, etc. and convert those in to NMS alarms.

 

They said that is OK but have instances in the past where the hardware vendor agents have stopped working and so no SNMP traps are issued.

 

Has anyone addressed this before?

Is there a way to "poll" the hardware vendor agents to ensure they are still alive and responding?

 

Thanks

Ray

[Anon Anon]

Usually you can SNMP poll values from the hardware agents. I believe this depends upon the SNMP service in the OS, and just the hardware-specific OIDs are provided by the hardware agent. However, if the agent were to fail, I am not sure if the SNMP requests to those OIDs would fail or if the SNMP service would just keep returning the most recent values for all of the OIDs.

 

Not sure if this helps when you are talking to a prospect rather than a customer who might be able to test...

 

-Keith

[Anon Anon]

You could also try to net_connect to port 162 to verify it's listening, there may even be a way for you to issue a 'handshake' to verify it's fully responsive.

 

Dustin

[Anon Anon]

Are you sure the SNMP agent would listen on port 162? That is the trap port, so it should be the port on which the snmptd probe listens rather than the agent. Unless the agent also listens on that port because it plans to send from that port...

 

The SNMP agent should definitely be listening on port 161 if it is accepting SNMP requests, but as far as I know it only listens on the UDP port and not the TCP port, in which case net_connect would not help.

 

I think the SNMP service is usually provided by the OS rather than the hardware agent, so confirming that is listening probably does not really prove the hardware agent is up. Right?

 

-Keith

[Anon Anon]

Good question, I thought it might but perhaps that isn't the case.

 

Hrmm... Ray, what about putting it back on them, i.e. "what are you doing to monitor this today?" There must be some type of way they're doing it?

 

What about a hearbeat? You should see if it's possible to setup a constant informational trap from the agent to SNMPTD, then if the trap isn't received within X number of time, then you know you have an issue.

 

D

[Anon Anon]

Thanks Guys. Specifically this is for IBM Director - the prospect has had problems with this in the past. I will investigate whether there is any way to get IBM Director agents to send a heartbeat trap.

 

Ray

[Anon Anon]

reviving this thread...

 

we have the dom_traps extension for snmptd but neither I nor my prospect can figure out how to configure the traps to be sent to an IP.  it simply isn~t in the menus we are looking at.  I~m not sure what the problem is but I did see that I can query the agent(snmpget).  Do we have anything neatly created already in the form of an snmpget template?

[Anon Anon]

Javier, 

 

This is usually done via the SNMP Service on the Windows machine itself.

[Anon Anon]

From the Del OpenManage Server Administrator version 6.4 guide....

 

Configuring Your System to Send SNMP Traps to a Management Station
The Dell OpenManage software generates SNMP traps in response to
changes in the status of sensors and other monitored parameters. You must
configure one or more trap destinations on the Dell OpenManage software
system for SNMP traps to be sent to a management station.
1 Open the Computer Management window.
2 Expand the Computer Management icon in the window, if necessary.
3 Expand the Services and Applications icon and click Services.
4 Scroll down the list of services to SNMP Service, right-click SNMP
Service, and click Properties.
The SNMP Service Properties window appears.
5 Click the Traps tab to add a community for traps or to add a trap
destination for a trap community.
a To add a community for traps, type the community name in the
Community Name box and click Add to list, which is located next to
the Community Name box.
b To add a trap destination for a trap community, select the community
name from the Community Name drop-down box and click Add
under the Trap Destinations box.
The SNMP Service Configuration window appears.
c Type the trap destination and click Add.
The SNMP Service Properties window appears.
6 Click OK to save the changes.

[Anon Anon]

figured out how to send traps.  depends on windows trap service and an obscure config in the www page. 

 

nothing else needed.