Monitoring Cisco based networks

[teleneko]

Hi,

I would like to manage a network based on Cisco devices (routers, switchs and other stuff). I presume that someone is monitoring a similar environment and probably he will give us some suggestions.

One of the most interesting applications for me is the management of configurations via TFTP. But in order to store them in the database I will need the possibility of storing more than 255 characters in the defined item, and as far as I know it is not possible.

Any suggestion?

Thanx.

[tvman]

255 characters limit

who said that mysql cannot store more than 255 characters?
I'm using it for my provisioning system which holds config files for all my servers (Linux) and network equpment. There is only difference, I use "expect" tool to pool or push files through shell interface (CLI).
I can install brand new OS to the system, then run config script and in seconds I'm getting ready to go system.

[teleneko]

Re: 255 characters limit

I am afraid there has been a confussion. I am not referring to mysql but to zabbix. What I was trying to say is that the items of type string only can store 255 characters.

My idea is similar to yours, but I want to integrate this configurations history in zabbix.

[elkor]

you could still do this, you just need to modify the code to support it.

it would probably work better as a "plugin" style enhancement, make a new php module to retrieve the info from the database from a drop down list and put it in an editable text block, then a pair of buttons that run scripts to tftp to/from the router/switch and a third button to commit the current text window to the database. much of this functionality can be grabbed by using include files from the existing frontend.

I'd probably put the config info in a separate table as well.

[bbrendon]

After using zabbix for awhile, I think its great for monitoring devices for up/down, collecting data on hosts, etc, but for monitoring a large amount of network equiptment, I think you'd be better off with something like Cacti.

Just my .02

[yeadude]

teleneko, if your looking for config management look into RANCID, Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ... http://www.shrubbery.net/rancid/

"Rancid monitors a router's (or device's) configuration, including software and hardware (cards, serial numbers, etc), using CVS. Rancid currently supports Cisco routers, Juniper routers, Catalyst switches, Foundry switches, Redback NASs, ADC EZT3 muxes, MRTd (and thus likely IRRd), Alteon switches, and HP procurve switches and a host of others."

Anyone here monitoring Cisco devices (router, switch. pix)? Is there any good open source software besides zabbix? The only other interesting one i found was Nagios ... Anyone here with expereince in a production enviroment?

YeaDudes!

[Kernel Panic]

teleneko,

I'm in the same boat as you. I've got a BIG network that we need to find a better management/monitoring solution than the one we currently have. I am new to Zabbix (as in I installed it just this week to evaluate it)

But here is what I've discovered with the other tools:

Nagios -- This product is JUST network host or network service monitoring. It has flap detection and the ability to create parent/child relations between routers that allowed to to properly detect network outages versus just a whole bunch of hosts being unreachable. The web interface is clean and very nice too. The backend is flatfile but there are about a billion plugins for it.

Jffnms -- This product can do it all, graphing, network service monitoring, configuration file monitoring and even syslog monitoring if you have a syslogd that supports mysql. The problem I had was that it wouldn't work. I was getting false alarms all over the place, other times I couldn't get the $@^ program to properly identify network interfaces. (I could not discover any interfaces on a Cisco 2621) It also hasn't been updated in over a year which makes me fear its become abandonware. The interface was also NOT one of my favorites. It did not have a way (that I could see) to create a network view either.

Cacti - I haven't installed this product yet but it appears to be a very good network device graphing utility. Uses mysql as the backend and php as the front. Everyone I've talked to has raved about it.

Torrus -Just a network device graphing utility as well. Uses xml in the backend that requires it to be "compiled". I't can't hack more than a few hundred devices without beating the crap out of the server. And if not set up properly, is a convoluted mess to manage.

Cricket - Another network device graphing utility. Its pretty simple to use and manage. But doesn't scale well because it has a flatfile backend.

RANCID - A nice CVS based tool that only fetches Cisco, Foundry and Juniper configurations from the routers. It's written in perl and expect which means that it too will beat on a server if you start monitoring too many devices.

[riegersteve]

check out netdisco

great autodiscovery

[nick5000]

Hello everyone,

I am trying to monitor a Cisco-based network with Zabbix. I've set up a syslog server, and it is working well. I would like to get these logs into zabbix, underneath my Cisco router host, for example. I've read that you can do a log[name of log file] on the syslog server, but I was wondering if there was a way to pull the log from the syslog server and add it as an item of the Cisco router host. I can separate the log entries from the Cisco host into a separate log file, but I would like to get the data of this log file as an item of the Cisco host. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Nick

[[email protected]]

Nick,

We have a KIWI syslog server (windows) that forwards every Syslog message received from any device in the network as a snmptrap to our Zabbix server.
On the Zabbix server, we run snmp daemon to receive the snmp traps.
Every snmptrap is automatically forwarded to Zabbix with zabbix_sender. You can tune this forwarding by making a smart snmptrap.sh script.

In Zabbix, we have a host and an item (type trapper) for every Cisco device that we monitor.

There are probably easier ways to do the same trick, but this one works fine for us.

[saulosilva]

I start to use Zabbix to monitoring not a CISCO network but Nortel Network . And I start to SNMP to do that . Now a days I have SQL scripts to import to zabbix to create the itens for the network actives . Now I start to work in the triggers.

Are there some repository that I can put this scripts ?

About the topic . To me working fine, My server is a PIV 1GB RAM and 80 GB disk .

[monrad]

i dont think there is a place to share such things yet, but please do i would like to see such scripts, there is no need for all of us to reinvent the wheel each time

[triplem]

saulosilva: Post them here in a seperate post (under Zabbix Cookbook). We'd all like to look at those.

nick5000: I'm working on something similar. I'd be interested if you got that external log data added as an item.