Configuration Advice

[Hugo van der Kooij]

On Thu, 11 May 2006, Robert Jackson wrote:

> I've finally managed to get my installation of Nagios (v2.3) and the
> Nagios
> Plugins (v1.4.3) running under CentOS (v4.3).
>
> I'm now after some advice if possible. I would like to know how the
> 'real world'
> have their systems configured.
>
> I want to be able to see all the ports on my network switches and also
> all devices
> connected to those ports on those switches.

You do not want to see each port. You might want to see each port if
you run a tool like cacti to track the amount of traffic but that's it.

In a normal network you take a switch as a single entity. Each host
will have the switch as parent and the switch will have another parent.

If the switch goes down so will all the host attached to it. And if just
one or two hosts go down it is either a host, a cable or a switch port
issue.

The change of an individual port breaking down is not worth the trouble of
having an entity set for each port. Even with templates it is quite a
resource hog to keep it up-to-date.

Some of the smarter switches will not enjoy getting a load of SNMP
requests to verify each and every port. And if your switch is not SNMP
manageble you will not even be able to get any status at all and this
whole discussion is futile anyway.

(Building and troubleshooiting network is what I do for a living.)

If you monitor each switch port you will be in for surprises if someone
plugs over a cable just to verify wether the cable, the host nic or the
switch port is broken.

Only paranoid type networks might even considere doing a portlevel check
on the switch. But those networks have fixed MAC addresses assigned to
each port and propably will not allow SNMP anyway. (SNMP being UDP and
all. ;-)

So in the 'real world' you considere your switch as a single entity and do
not bother with the ports.

Hugo.

-- 
	I hate duplicates. Just reply to the relevant mailinglist.
	hvdkooij at vanderkooij.org		http://hvdkooij.xs4all.nl/
		Don't meddle in the affairs of magicians,
		for they are subtle and quick to anger.


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