[NCSA-discuss] MIBs and monitoring

[Galen Johnson]

Don't forget about devmon (devmon.sourceforge.net).  It's an add-on to
Xymon.  I also seem to recall some talk a couple of years ago where
Henrik was thinking of adding native support to Xymon for SNMP.
However, I think he has since pulled that out.

As for the MIBs, I believe that there are many templates available for
devmon to save you the trouble of creating your own and a forum to ask
for help.

=G=


On 10/11/2011 08:56 AM, Craig Cook wrote:
> I don't recommend SNMP monitoring for servers.  I have tried that before and it is difficult to manage.  Do you use the native SNMP on some OS's or do you standardize on net-snmp?  Yes, you can extend net-snmp to run scripts and provide metrics when you poll an OID but it becomes difficult to update clients.  (Plus, you are pretty much on your own creating your own customized monitoring solution, I try and use other peoples work ;)
> 
> 
> I only use SNMP polling for devices that can't run agents, like network equipment.
> 
> MRTG is great for monitoring traffic.  There is a bb / xymon extension that polls the RRD files in MRTG and reports status.  i.e. you can check certain ports for over or under a certain amount of utilization.  e.g. If I have less than 1% traffic on my internet link I have a problem.
> 
> RRD is used for trending, if you are mainly interested in trending take a look at cacti.
> 
> When I was last using MRTG there was a limitation of only being able to have 2 plot lines (which is fine for traffic utilization).  That was one of the main reasons LARRD was created.
> 
> Someone also mentioned monitoring brocade switches.  I wrote a perl script that does that and reports to xymon.  Not sure where it is published these days, but I can find it if needed.  Think it was called bb-brocade.pl
> 
> 
> Craig
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ________________________________
> From: Dewey Hylton <dewey at hyltown.com>
> To: NC*SA Discussion List <ncsa-discussion at ncsysadmin.org>
> Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 9:54 PM
> Subject: Re: [NCSA-discuss] MIBs and monitoring
> 
> i use snmp/rrdtool, but only for traffic monitoring where i used to employ mrtg. it works like a champ - set it and forget it. mostly i just use it to keep up with vpn/multiroute traffic (multiple vpn/gre/tun/virtual interfaces where configs tend to get a bit confusing for me). fwiw, in almost all cases my host os is openbsd.
> 
> i also currently use snmp (but not rrdtool) in concert with orion/solarwinds for monitoring of just about everything (routers/vmware/servers). it kind of does its job. and i hate it very much.
> 
> regarding xymon:
> i used big brother over a decade ago and it was wonderful for our needs (300+ windows servers, probably 50 aix/linux boxes). where i sit today, we've used zabbix/groundwork/... and a whole slew of other things. solarwinds is the only thing that stuck, and that was a management decision - those of us in the trenches pretty much hate it. i've asked permission to stand up another big brother instance because i was familiar with it and knew it could get the job done - so was surprised and happy to hear how xymon is related.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Joseph Mack NA3T" <jmack at wm7d.net>
>> To: "NC*SA Discussion List" <ncsa-discussion at ncsysadmin.org>
>> Sent: Monday, October 10, 2011 9:34:38 PM
>> Subject: [NCSA-discuss] MIBs and monitoring
>>
>> I was at Craig's talk tonight on xymon. I didn't think to
>> ask this about MIBs...
>>
>> I use rrdtool to monitor my machines. I initially tried
>> handwritten scripts to get snmp data but found it much
>> easier to get data from standard unix utils (df, ifconfig,
>> cat /proc/...).
>>
>> From general discussion tonight, I gather that no-one uses a
>> MIB if you can get the info directly.
>>
>> When do you use MIBs/SNMP? On a machine that doesn't have a
>> regular OS, like a switch,printer?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Joe
>>
>> --
>> Joseph Mack NA3T EME(B,D), FM05lw North Carolina
>> jmack (at) wm7d (dot) net - azimuthal equidistant map
>> generator at http://www.wm7d.net/azproj.shtml
>> Homepage http://www.austintek.com/ It's GNU/Linux!
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>>
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