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Uesful switching checks

Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2015 10:25 am
by sharding
we have been doing up/don checks on switches for years, which is ok but not really that useful, what would be useful is to monitor specific ports (like IDF / uplink ports) and report thresholds of increased delay or excessive errors, high switch memory usage to name a few.

SMNP is set on just about all of our switches and many other tools can do all this so how is this topic handled in the nagiosXI world ? surely I can't be the only person who wants a little more than just up/down ?

All ours are Dell but others may have other makes.

-- mod edit --
fixed spelling error in Subject to make search results more useful

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2015 12:34 pm
by jdalrymple
Our generic switch/router wizard will monitor port status and IO thresholds you set based upon the SNMP2-IF MIB.

These are obviously just the basics, but by adding one or more of the numerous plugins from the exchange you can extend the functionality, it just won't be wizardable.

We have documentation for managing plugins here that may be helpful.

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2015 1:15 pm
by sharding
I'll check them out, stuff needs to be in wizard though, pls leave this open want to see how others weigh in

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2015 1:38 pm
by jdalrymple
sharding wrote:stuff needs to be in wizard though
You would be surprised to know that sometimes the wizard is NOT the easiest way to create hosts/services. Sometimes your best option is to design a template you can assign to a host so that all the appropriate configuration options propagate in without your interaction. The wizards preclude this option as they define services specific to hosts instead of hostgroups.

If your environment is small there is less to be gained and using the wizard for everything is OK. If you have an expansive environment though I suggest looking over these documents as they can streamline the host/service creation and management process:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... gement.pdf
http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/nagi ... tance.html
http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/nagi ... ricks.html

We will leave it open for others to share their methods.

Thanks

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Mon Apr 27, 2015 3:29 pm
by WillemDH
Hello,

Just to confirm jdalrymple, I'm only using the bulk host cloning wizard in fact. The wizards are good for getting some examples of how you could do it. But if you want to bulk edit, you better make use of service / host templates and put most of your config for each type of checks there. (Gotta watch out with switches though, as mrtg is not cloned with the bulk host cloning wizard. You will need to configure mrtg as needed.)

Grtz

Willem

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 7:46 am
by sharding
close this thread, some interesting comments others less helpful, I understand all that but some admins are MS background people, so need wizards, even those that shalt not pass

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Tue Apr 28, 2015 9:27 am
by tmcdonald
If you would like a wizard to be made for something we can do that, but a feature request needs to be made first otherwise we won't know that people want it. Would you like me to make a feature request for this?

We also can do custom development on a timeline, but that is something you would need to speak to Sales about.

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 12:29 pm
by sharding
yes please feature request

Re: Uesful switching checks

Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2015 2:05 pm
by jdalrymple
sharding wrote:close this thread, some interesting comments others less helpful, I understand all that but some admins are MS background people, so need wizards, even those that shalt not pass
Please note that WillemDH's suggestion actually employs a wizard.

Additionally the process I described can be done in near entirety using a mouse. The keyboard would only be needed to give the hostgroups and services a name.
sharding wrote:yes please feature request
What feature would you like requested specifically? SNMP2-IF MIB has some error counts included, but no doubt your switches have their own MIBs with more advanced information, for which we include the snmpwalk wizard. The other components of the switches can be monitored via the vanilla snmp device wizard. It seems like we have all of your bases covered with wizards today.

We would be happy to put in the feature request if you can help us describe what exactly you want.