Better way to check Cisco switches?

[dave stern - e-mail.pluribus.unum]

Nagios is a phenomenal tool but isn't necessarily a silver bullet.
Nagios does try a certain number of times before a soft failure
becomes a hard failure. This can be adjusted. Also, many people
have replaced a very tight check_ping with check_icmp and looser
return times.

But in general, you might wish to monitor a manageable switch
with something else. Indeed snmp is an excellent way to go.
You'll then need to figure out some way to manage the snmp
messages though. One way might be to search for interface down
messages where it doesn't come back within a period of time.
This can be done with logsurfer, splunk and probably a number
of other tools

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 9:39 AM, Bailey, Damian S.
<baileyds at lcps.k12.va.us> wrote:
> Good morning!
>
>
>
> After posting a bit ago, I found that other Nagios users experienced the
> same issue I did in relying on the check_ping routine when monitoring Cisco
> switches – they would occasionally return false critical; however, the
> switches were actually still online and would immediately recover.
>
>
>
> So this leads me to the obvious question – how do you all use Nagios to
> effectively monitor Cisco switches?  Is there a better way to check these
> with snmp?  Something else?
>
>
>
> Thanks!
>
>
>
> Damian Bailey
>
> Lead Technician | LCPS Technology
>
>
>
> From: Bailey, Damian S.
> Sent: Monday, June 27, 2011 11:55 AM
> To: 'nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net'
> Subject: new to Nagios - known issue w/ Cisco switch host checks?
>
>
>
> We’re new to using Nagios but I’ve grown to love it!  In using the product
> to perform host checks on our Cisco switches, I find that they “randomly”
> will fail, then recover almost immediately.
>
>
>
> I think the host checks use ping to verify that the switches are active.
>
>
>
> Is there something I am likely doing wrong, or should I look at our network
> as a possible cause?  Our network itself isn’t perfect…but I don’t want to
> go looking for problems if it’s a nagios issue.
>
>
>
> Thanks for any help.  I’ll be glad to provide more info if needed.
>
>
>
> Damian Bailey
>
> Lead Technician | LCPS Technology
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of the data generated in your IT infrastructure is seriously valuable.
Why? It contains a definitive record of application performance, security 
threats, fraudulent activity, and more. Splunk takes this data and makes 
sense of it. IT sense. And common sense.
http://p.sf.net/sfu/splunk-d2d-c2
_______________________________________________
Nagios-users mailing list
Nagios-users at lists.sourceforge.net
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nagios-users
::: Please include Nagios version, plugin version (-v) and OS when reporting any issue. 
::: Messages without supporting info will risk being sent to /dev/null