Monitoring UPS Devices

[atlantic]

Good afternoon,

I know that if a UPS device supports SNMP, you should be able to monitor it - ping (keep alive), and SNMP Traps.

We have various UPS devices, APC, TripLite, Toshiba and Alpha Technologies. What we would like to do is "poll" (SNMP Walk) the UPS device to gather information such as the percentage of load on the UPS, the battery status (health, charge, estimated run time). Then we can set up monitor these values (services) and set up thresholds that would trigger alerts.

Is this possible with Nagios XI R.1.

Thank you,

Mark Frew
Atlantic Broadband

[nscott]

Mark,

If you logon to library.nagios.com and login with your Library credentials, so a search for SNMP Walk Wizard and you will find the wizard for SNMP Walk. You'll simply need to run and select the items from the walk you want to montior.

[atlantic]

Good morning,

I added the Monitoring Wizard, SNMP Walk, and tried to use it to add an APC UPS. I was not sure what top level OID to use on the scan, so I left that field blank. The scan did not discover anything specific to a UPS (I added this same device to another vendor's monitoring s/w and it discovered that it was a APC UPS, and was able to display values for "UPS load" and "UPS Status").

I tried using the SNMP Walk wizard to scan using a specific OID for 'upsOutputPercentageLoad', .1.3.6.1.2.1.33.1.4.4.1.5, and it translated the OID properly, but it responded "No Such Object available on this agent at this OID" and listed under 'Mid to Use" was 'UPS-MID".

Can you guide to which top level OID to use for the scan to pick up the appropriate UPS SNMP values. I tried using the string "UPS-MIB", but that did not yield any results at all. I know the SNMP objects are there, I just don't know how to poll them using Nagios. As I mentioned, another vendor's demo s/w, ManageEngine OpManager, picked up the SNMP objects. Is there a way to do this with Nagios, maybe I am not using the OID value to scan with???

Thanks for your time regarding this matter.

Mark

[nscott]

Mark,

The top-down OID will vary by manufacturer, but try this:

Download the UPS-MIB.txt to your MIB directory:

wget http://www.mibsearch.com/vendors/RFC/download/UPS-MIB -O /usr/share/snmp/mibs/UPSx-MIB.txt

(its in windows format so we'll have to convert it)

tr -d '\15\32' < UPSx-MIB.txt > UPS-MIB.txt

This should turn the OIDs into higher level OIDs.

[atlantic]

Hi Nicholas,

Thanks for the information -- I download the UPS-MIB file and converted. I noticed that in /usr/local/share/snmp/mibs directory there usually is a corresponding '.my' file. I'm curious if file makes a difference with the scan.

I'm still unsure of what to enter into the field labeled "OID:" in the 'SNMP Walk" wizard. It has the following description "The top-level OID to use for scanning. Clear this field to scan for all OIDs on the device." I've tried entering "UPS-MIB", but it yields no results, and if you leave the field blank it returns SNMP elements to monitor, but not any from the UPS-MIB file.

I apologize for lack of knowledge here, but if I plug in specific OIDs or object names, it will sometimes return a value for that element from the scan, for example, tlups for the Trip Lite UPS, but I am not getting the elements I wish to monitor. Maybe you can point me in the right direction...

At this point, my head hurts, lol.

mark

[nscott]

Mark,

Don't feel bad, Simple Network Management Protocol is a complete misnomer, I venture a hypothesis that if SNMP never makes youre head hurt, you aren't actually using it! But perhaps I can just shed a little bit of light on what that OID is asking for.

That OID is asking for the tree path that you want to search under. Each number in that nasty looking address 1.3.6.1.1.33.2.5 is specifying which branch to you, starting at the top (1) is specifying to go down the 1 branch, then from there go down the 3 branch, then go down the 6 branch, then go down the 1 branch. So if we wanted to search for all the SNMP variables under the 1.3.6.1.1 tree, we would set 1.3.6.1.1 as our top level OID, this would return all variables classified under 1.3.6.1.1.

Where this gets complicated, is also where its most useful. In your case, you're trying to monitor Tripp Lite equipment. SNMP has an enterprise tree where different companies can specify their own variables. I did a search, and it looks like tripp lites enterprise number is 850. So to get all the variables that Tripp Lite has specified on its devices is 1.3.6.1.4.1.850

It has further specified sub-trees of its own tree! (Don't worry, I know this is very confusing.) Its made variables exclusively fore tripp lite UPSs under its 850.1 so the full name of where its UPS variables start is at 1.3.6.1.4.1.850.1.

HOW THIS APPLIES TO YOUR SITUATION:

Now that I know the manufacturer of your device, I can help you a little better. I'm going to have to ask you to download the Tripp Lite specified MIB to your Nagios XI server.

Code: Select all

wget http://www.mibsearch.com/vendors/Tripp%20Lite/download/TRIPPUPS1-MIB -O temp.txt
tr -d '\15\32' < temp.txt > TRIPPUPS1-MIB.txt
echo "TRIPPUPS1-MIB" >> /etc/snmp/snmpd.conf
service snmpd restart

Then try using your shiny new top-level OID of 1.3.6.1.4.1.850
[/code]

[atlantic]

Good afternoon Nicholas,

Well, here are the results of the "SNMP Walk" Monitoring Wizard using the tripplite top-level OID, 1.3.6.1.4.1.850. I downloaded and converted the TRIPPLITE1-UPS mib file.
I'm sure if I am describing it properly, but the scan, or SNMP Walk, found a bunch of SNMP objects/elements - they were all listed as object, tripplite.10.1.2.1.0 to tripplite.10.2.2.1.6.1

I attached a partial screen scrape of the scan results. The objects appear to network related. I don't think it returned any values regarding UPS Load and such.

I thought I would try using the top level OID for APC to see if I get better (or more meaningful) results.

Thanks,

Mark

[nscott]

Hmm,

After doing more digging, it looks likes the MIBS specific to voltage power are under 850.1.1, does doing a snmpwalk against that OID bring anything up?

If all else fails doing a walk against that and using http://www.oidview.com/mibs/850/TRIPPUPS1-MIB.html as a reference as to what they mean would get you monitoring them.