SNMP monitoring features in NetCrunch

There is a lot of the ways of how we can monitor the condition, performance and availability of the devices with available SNMP service running on them. Learn how to gather the counters and states from various devices with the tools available in the NetCrunch.

Physical segments and connections topology

With the proper configuration of the SNMP NetCrunch can generate the Physical Segments map, which shows the topology of the network devices in the monitoring network, with details about the configuration of the links between these appliances.

Map is able to show the current load of the network flow, the specification of the physical interfaces to which connection is established and with the data from the Layer 2 protocols it can model the structure of the all of the subsegments in the atlas. By the additional configuration of the data refresh intervals you can keep the actual view of the monitored environment.

Routing map

The proper SNMP configuration also allows us to create the routing map of the links between the Layer 3 devices. Map will present the path of the packets distribution in the monitored environment with the current representation of their state.

The knowledge of the routing in network environments is really helpful in the cases of troubleshooting the issues related to the connectivity between corporate networks, because in the neat and clearly to understand form administrators are aware of the status their network surroundings.

Availability and performance of network devices

Monitoring of the performance and the availability of devices can also be performed with the valuable data gathered by the SNMP. From the node status administrator has the immediate overview of the work and the flow of the packets transmitted by the interfaces in the network hardware.

NetCrunch will lists the all of the available interfaces and logically aggregated connections with the description of their state, input and output bandwidth and after additional configuration of SNMP monitoring – the detailed data about more specific metrics from running agent on device.

Cisco’s IP SLA monitoring

IP SLA service from the Cisco is the integral part of the IOS (Internetwork Operating System), which allows for Cisco customers to perform the detailed analysis of the IP services levels for all of the resources in the monitored environment, which can create the network traffic. It describes the priorities for the application and the services active in the network. This feature can ensure that the critical services and applications running in the production will meet and complete the requirements of the service level agreements (SLA).

Out of the box NetCrunch supports the IP SLA monitoring for quite big number of preconfigured apps and services, however on demand users can define new templates of their solutions to be properly recognized by the flow analyzers .

SNMP traps capturing and gathering

In NetCrunch developers implemented the built-in SNMP traps listener. This function allows the administrators and engineers to listen the incoming traps pushed from the SNMP agent on network device. From the NC we can configure the way of how the incoming traps will be interpreted and how the NetCrunch will react for these information about unwanted behavioral of the hardware. Also it’s possible in the NetCrunch configuration to redirect these traps to other machine or the monitoring solutions to perform additional operations on provided data.

Alerts and data collecting

The ability to collect the metrics data, events on running machines and alerts appearing on them is the elementary property of the monitoring solution. In NetCrunch it is performed in various of the ways, from accessing to the resources on Windows by WMI classes to getting the required data by vendors API interfaces to these devices.

The SNMP protocol is one of the places, from which NetCrunch request the monitoring metrics. Beside the prepared monitoring pack and sensors right after the installation our product also allows users to create their custom data collectors and alerting rules for the specific case. The distribution of these templates can be automated with the usage of the monitoring packs for specific type of devices, or if it is needed – they can be manually attached to proper hardware monitored in the network atlas.

Additional tools

NetCrunch offers to end users more ways of checking and managing the data in simple network management protocol environment:

• ITools Tools IP & SNMP Tools – with the features for the checking the state of the elementary services on machines it can also access to SNMP counter on nodes with running SNMP agent
• SNMP MIB Database & Compiler Tools SNMP MIB Database & Compiler – database of the precompiled MIB files with the possibility to add new ones, by compilating them to be used in NetCrunch
• SNMP View Editor Tools SNMP View Editor – this app is a SNMP browser, which allows to manage of the view of the parameters gathered by protocol from the agent and to modify the current representation of monitoring metrics from devices

Additionally, for free, users can download and install the NetCrunch Tools – the essential toolkit of the modules for checking the basics of the network availability and configuration. As the one of the free features there is the module for checking the basic information about the device, called SNMP Scanner.

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