SNMP Dymanically Monitoring {Anything with an index}

[netgeek1979]

But; For this example Let's take interfaces:

snmpwalk -v2c -c {community} {ip}

From that output I get:
IF-MIB::ifNumber.0 = INTEGER: 3
Which tells me I have 3 interfaces


IF-MIB::ifIndex.1 = INTEGER: 1
IF-MIB::ifIndex.65539 = INTEGER: 65539
IF-MIB::ifIndex.131076 = INTEGER: 131076
IF-MIB::ifDescr.1 = STRING: MS TCP Loopback interface
IF-MIB::ifDescr.65539 = STRING: Intel(R) PRO/1000 MT Network Connection
IF-MIB::ifDescr.131076 = STRING: vmxnet3 Ethernet Adapter

Which tells me that I have 3 interfaces that I'd like to monitor.

I know that there are 3 that I'm interested in, and I also know that the ifIndex is 1, 65539 & 131076. I also know that the locations of the stuff I'm intesrested in is:
IF-MIB::ifInOctets.1 = Counter32: 2304721
IF-MIB::ifInOctets.65539 = Counter32: 1311814802
IF-MIB::ifInOctets.131076 = Counter32: 17647
We'll just say InOctets for Right now.

So - In Cacti I say 'go query interfaces & give me data on them'. I understand enough about zabbix currently that I need to do something dynamic, but I'm curious what the 'proper' way is, as i'm sure I'm not thinking in 100% zabbix mentality just yet.

Thanks for any input

[Wonderer]

http://www.zabbix.com/documentation/...ynamic_indexes is exactly what you need.

For you cases it should look like:
IF-MIB::ifInOctets["index","IF-MIB::ifDescr","MS TCP Loopback interface"]
IF-MIB::ifInOctets["index","IF-MIB::ifDescr","Intel(R) PRO/1000 MT Network Connection"]
IF-MIB::ifInOctets["index","IF-MIB::ifDescr","vmxnet3 Ethernet Adapter"]

[netgeek1979]

Thanks for your answer and I did go down that route enough to figure that much out.

It just seems backwards to me that to make this work, I need to know the Model of the NIC's; whereas there is an existing index of NIC sub-OID's instead of guessing.

I suppose in a worst-case I could keep a database of NIC's that we use and enumerate based on that, but that still feels like a hack.


All in all; I'd like the machine thinking to be:
"Ahh, I see you have 3 NIC's - Give me the information on each of these"

not

"Hey Server, Do you have a 3com nic? How about intel? How about broadcom? no? Okay, No graphs for you then".

[Wonderer]

This is the way Zabbix works.
Zabbix strong side is to monitor devices/services which initially lack of the SNMP support, thus lack of monitoring.
SNMP part was added as an addition to the zabbix agent interface support.
(Developers, correct me if I am wrong).
And as zabbix is used mostly by the system administrators and not the "managers" you have to do some "manual" operations beforehand, like doing snmpwalk

[WM2010]

So the index module can only use strings?
Why cant it use the Integer Values of ifIndex?

I want to define a generic switch profile. But every switch puts different structures in ifDescr.
ifIndex would be the correct "SNMP Way" of dynamic mapping and would work for all our switches.

Any chance to have this implemented in a future version?

[Axilla]

Zabbix and SNMP do not work the way they should. To be honest it is the only thing truly holding it back. If they would just give zabbix better SNMP support it would be the true king.