Tuesday, October 18, 2011

NMIS Configuration Part 2

In the previous post I presented a basic how to on configuring the basic notification system for NMIS.  Now I will show how to add network nodes to be monitored by NMIS.  First go to Configuration>System>Nodes.

Configuration>System>Nodes
This will bring up the Nodes listing showing currently configured nodes.  To add a node, click on add to the right of Action on the top right part of the screen.


Once you click Add, you will see the add node screen as shown below.  There are a lot of variables to configure for each node.

  • Name: This is the name of the node and should have no spaces in it.  This must be unique.
  • Name/IP Address:  This is the IP or the FQDN of the node.
  • Group: This is the group in which the node will be displayed.
  • Select Model:  This is the data model that NMIS will use to gather SNMP data from the device.  In most cases automatic works best.
  • Active:  This defines whether the node is currently actively polled.  You can use this set to false to take a group of nodes out of active monitoring without deleting them.
  • Ping: Should NMIS ping the node for availability?
  • Collect:  Should NMIS collect SNMP data from the node?
  • CBQoS:  Should NMIS collect data about Class Based QoS on inbound, outbound, both or none?
  • Modem Calls:  Should NMIS collect data on modem calls (not used often)?
  • Threshold:  Should NMIS run threshold calculations on this node?
  • Rancid: Should the Rancid add in add this node to a rancid configuration file? (I'm not sure if this tool is still supported.)
  • Web Server:  Does this device run a webserver?
  • Net Type:  Is this device WAN or LAN?
  • Role Type:  Is the device core, distribution or access?
  • Depend:  What devices must be up for this device to be up?  This provides NMIS with a way of knowing when not to alert on a node if an upstream node is down.
  • Services: Should NMIS check to make sure certain services are running on the node?
  • Time Zone: What is the time zone offset for the device from GMT?
  • SNMP Settubgs:  What version of SNMP should be used to poll the device and what is the configuration for that version?
When the configuration is complete, click Add and Update node to add the node to the NMIS configuration and tell NMIS to run an initial scan of the host. 


Once the nodes are added, it may take 10-15 minutes for data to start to show up depending on how often the NMIS cron jobs are set to run.  This concludes the basic configuration of NMIS.  There are a lot more nerd nobs in the software, but unfortunately good documentation is not available for the product, especially the newest 8.x versions.  Opmantek has said that documentation is a focus for their team so hopefully it will be coming soon.  In my next post I will discuss how to use NMIS once it is collecting data.
Posted by Ben Story at 10:00
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10 comments:

  1. UnknownDecember 12, 2011 at 11:11 AM

    Hi
    Did you manage to get temperature monitor? I have many 6500 it does not show temprature for any of them. Also for some it shows power supply status but for some nothing. Have you manage to do some model profiling ? Please share.

    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Ben StoryDecember 12, 2011 at 11:27 AM

    I haven't played with that in the new versions. I know that they just put out a new 8.3 version that you might try. Otherwise, their yahoo e-mail group is a good place to troubleshoot things like this.

    ReplyDelete
  3. FredOctober 9, 2013 at 11:14 AM

    HI, can you tell me how do you handle Threshold values? I´m configuring NMIS Threshold values for my LAN switches ports (input and output traffic) and I´m having hard time here. There are too much false positives Thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ben StoryOctober 9, 2013 at 11:27 AM

    I have actually disabled notifications for most threshold values for my access ports. On my core ports I leave the defaults and although there are false positives, it's not enough that I can't take a quick glance and filter.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownOctober 18, 2013 at 9:36 AM

    Can you change the subject line of the email notifications

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ben StoryOctober 18, 2013 at 10:29 AM

    Not without changing some of the underlying Perl code, but it would be a good feature to through out to Opmantek. They do actively take suggestions from the community.

    ReplyDelete
  7. UnknownDecember 16, 2013 at 2:56 PM

    Any idea why my resp. time would be disabled? Status says normal, but I am not getting any health/reach/Intf.Avail.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Ben StoryDecember 16, 2013 at 3:39 PM

    Check to make sure that you can ping the host from NMIS and make sure that you have fping installed.

    ReplyDelete
  9. UnknownDecember 16, 2013 at 4:21 PM

    I have both installed. Pings are successful from the NMIS server. In the graphs when I click on the servers I see that graphs for reach ability. I am getting emails as well when nodes go down, just not getting status's.

    ReplyDelete
  10. UnknownDecember 16, 2013 at 5:05 PM

    I am installing it in the root directory. Does it need to be put somewhere else.

    ReplyDelete

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