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Best way of monitoring switches?

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  • welkin
    Senior Member
    • Mar 2007
    • 132

    #1

    Best way of monitoring switches?

    Hello,

    i need to monitor the port traffic of about 30 switches. The port count ranges from 10 ports to 48 ports. On each switch the ports have names. With an snmpwalk i can see the ifInOctests, ifOutOctets and the ifDescr of each port.
    But i don`t know how to combine the ifDescr of a port with the corresponding ifInOctets. I can add an item for e.g. ifInOctets.1 and name it manually with the value i get from ifDescr.1 but this way i would have to add all ports manually!!! I was thinking about writing a script which does a snmpwalk over a host and then adds the items with the right name to the zabbix database, but this script needs to be executed everytime a port changes it`s name, which is just too often. What i really need is something like this:

    The possibility to have an item description which recieves it`s value from another item. This way i could create a template with ifDescr for each port and with ifInOctets, ifOutOctets for each port where the description is the value recieved from the corresponding ifDescr.

    The only solution right know seems to configure all ports manually

    can someone please correct me and point me to the right page of the manual ?

    PS: I've already seen zabbix possibility of using dynamic indexes, but this way i still would have to configure each port name!


    regards
    welkin
  • jesmit
    Junior Member
    • Feb 2008
    • 20

    #2
    Best way of monitoring switches?

    Item descriptions are not dynamic.

    In my case I use dynamic indexes to grab the port descriptions and performance indicators and then setup screens that have the port descriptions on the left hand side with the graphs on the right hand side.

    I agree that this is very time consuming. It would be great to be able to link item values together like port descriptions and ifInOctects so we can see them all together on a graph.

    The other way to approach this is to add application groupings, you see all the port information when viewing latest values. ie. Add Gigabit1/0/1, Gigabit1/0/2, etc, etc. applications and associate all items that way./

    Comment

    • nurgen
      Junior Member
      • Jul 2010
      • 4

      #3
      This is, for me, the biggest problem of Zabbix. Zabbix is great for monitoring servers, but the inability to comb through network equipment and quickly associate multiple items together is the killer. Its like the one thing that keeps me from recommending it to others...

      "Zabbix is amazingly great, but...."

      And once I explain this, that but ends the discussion.

      Comment

      • MrKen
        Senior Member
        • Oct 2008
        • 652

        #4
        Originally posted by nurgen

        . . . . that but ends the discussion.
        Not yet!

        Do you know what is the number 1 feature request?



        After you vote for it, it might get even more support. Go ahead and vote.

        MrKen
        Disclaimer: All of the above is pure speculation.

        Comment

        • MrKen
          Senior Member
          • Oct 2008
          • 652

          #5
          Don't know how much longer we'll be waiting for that feature request to materialize, but in the mean time there could be other options to try.

          If you're using Zabbix 1.4.5 there is a patch that you can apply:


          If you're using Zabbix 1.6 the patch doesn't work.

          If you're using Zabbix 1.8.2, the patch from above has been rewitten:


          If neither of those patches are useful to you, then you could try this "command-line import/export facility dynamic items, triggers and graphs" http://www.zabbix.com/forum/showthread.php?t=15400

          MrKen
          Disclaimer: All of the above is pure speculation.

          Comment

          • welkin
            Senior Member
            • Mar 2007
            • 132

            #6
            Originally posted by nurgen
            This is, for me, the biggest problem of Zabbix. Zabbix is great for monitoring servers, but the inability to comb through network equipment and quickly associate multiple items together is the killer. Its like the one thing that keeps me from recommending it to others...

            "Zabbix is amazingly great, but...."

            And once I explain this, that but ends the discussion.
            Exactly what i`m thinking. We monitor many network devices (switches,firewalls, fibre equipment) which have description for a port or tunnel at a certain oid and the actual value at another. Because zabbix is not able to combine these informations, we have to manually edit the description.
            Now, you want to add a 48 port switch in zabbix:

            1) create a new host.
            2) link the host with a template with the items for e.g. IfInOctets IfOutOctets, IfError and the corresponding graphs, and triggers
            3) edit the description of ALL Items,Graphs,Triggers!! this takes hours!
            4) keep aware of EVERY change of an interface/tunnel name!

            Imagine you have about 5x 48 port switches, 20x 24 port switches and about 50x firewalls with 10 tunnels each. You`ll need more people to watch for configuration changes than people actual configuring these devices.

            I have no explanation for why this (in my eyes, must-have) feature is not yet implemented.

            So far zabbix is not usuable for larger setups with many snmp devices.

            As for patching zabbix : I don`t wanna end up with an installation which is no longer able to upgrade to another zabbix version, because i patched it with an unsupported patch from the forums.


            regards
            welkin

            Comment

            • nurgen
              Junior Member
              • Jul 2010
              • 4

              #7
              Originally posted by MrKen
              Not yet!

              Do you know what is the number 1 feature request?



              After you vote for it, it might get even more support. Go ahead and vote.

              MrKen
              Nice.

              One more vote.

              Comment

              • nurgen
                Junior Member
                • Jul 2010
                • 4

                #8
                Originally posted by welkin
                As for patching zabbix : I don`t wanna end up with an installation which is no longer able to upgrade to another zabbix version, because i patched it with an unsupported patch from the forums.
                Agreed. I successfully wrote my own hacks against the 1.6 branch and abandoned them for precisely the same reason. This feature is so critical, it has to be implemented at some point -- and I didn't want to haphazardly create a system that would be obsolete.

                However, being an open source project, hopefully the 2.8 patch is of sufficient quality to get merged.

                Edit: looked at the patch. While a good step forward, its weak-sauce. This needs to be more all encompassing and simple, so that the item you create is populated across _everything_: triggers, alarms, other items, etc.

                Cheers,
                nurgen
                Last edited by nurgen; 02-08-2010, 18:25.

                Comment

                • QwErTy_LoGiC
                  Member
                  • Feb 2010
                  • 66

                  #9
                  This is an urgent feature!

                  Honestly, with a 300+ switches environment, we did not even try to map things... we would need someone full time to create/maintain this...

                  We just monitor simple stuff, like pings, cpu load, temp... We never even considered monitoring stuff on the port level, short of a few specific exceptions, considering the features Zabbix has/lacks... And this hurts our monitoring from time to time.

                  I truly understand and agree with the philosophy of monitoring only what you need that Zabbix has, but some infrastructures are just too huge to ignore this feature...

                  Cheers!

                  Comment

                  • welkin
                    Senior Member
                    • Mar 2007
                    • 132

                    #10
                    Originally posted by nurgen
                    ...
                    This needs to be more all encompassing and simple, so that the item you create is populated across _everything_: triggers, alarms, other items, etc.
                    I totally agree with you. It would be great to have the return value of another item as part of the description. Everytime the description is used (graphs,triggers etc...) the last value of the "description item" is used.

                    I`m glad to see, that i'm not the only one who has this feature as the first on his zabbix wishlist. Imagine a zabbix where it takes you only 10 mins to create a template for all switches:

                    1) Do a snmpwalk over a switch with the zabbix integrated MIB browser (second point on my wishlist )
                    2) Create items based on the values and oid`s gathered from the snmpwalk
                    3) Create triggers based on the chosen items
                    4) Create one graph and chose which item should be part of the description
                    5) Clone the graph and change only the corresponding items
                    6) done!

                    regards
                    welkin

                    PS: Third point on my wishlist is the ability to give a user only access to certain items and corresponding triggers,graphs etc... this way customers could have a nice graph about their traffic and trigger which represents e.g. their monthly free traffic and we could shutdown our cacti/rrdtool/nagios... servers

                    PS-2: Fourth point: smokeping like features

                    Comment

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