Janice,

In relation to the contributed probes, unfortunately I don't always have
time to read my InterMapper Talk e-mail but that sounds like a good
idea.  I think it might also be helpful to have the date the probe was
added/updated on the User Contributed Probes page.
http://www.intermapper.com/support/user-contributed-probes

Thanks,

Vin

-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Thursday, January 07, 2010 7:00 AM
To: InterMapper Discussion
Subject: InterMapper-Talk Digest - 01/07/10

InterMapper-Talk Digest - Thursday, January 7, 2010

  Re: [IM-Talk] Contrib Probes Announce List
          by "Janice Losgar" <[email protected]>
  Alerting on VLAN statistics
          by "mcclainje" <[email protected]>
  Fault isolation and map status probe thresholds
          by "Stempien, Dave" <[email protected]>
  Re: [IM-Talk] Fault isolation
          by "Richard E. Brown" <[email protected]>
  Re: [IM-Talk] Map status probe thresholds
          by "Richard E. Brown" <[email protected]>
  Re: [IM-Talk] Map status probe thresholds
          by "Michael Graziano" <[email protected]>


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [IM-Talk] Contrib Probes Announce List
From: "Janice Losgar" <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:36:00 -0500

On 1/6/2010 1:47 AM, Jefferson Cowart wrote:
> I was just looking at the contrib probes list and noticed there was a
> new probe that monitored the exact thing I needed. I had looked a few
> weeks back, and it wasn't there. Is there any way we can get notices
> (either via this list, some other list, or RSS) of when contributed
> probes are posted/updated?
>
Hi Jefferson,

I will send a note to the InterMapper Talk list when a probe has been 
posted, and we'll investigate the RSS feed to see if that can be 
implemented as well.

-- 
Best regards,

Janice Losgar
Dartware, LLC
603)643-9600 x114

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Alerting on VLAN statistics
From: "mcclainje" <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 06 Jan 2010 15:05:06 -0500


We are trying to use IM to alert on VLAN utilization on our Cisco gear.
I am thinking that we need to build a probe using the SNMP high
threshold, however, I can't seem to figure out the proper variable.
Anyone doing this type of alerting, is there a better way?


-------------------- m2f --------------------

Read this topic online here:
http://forums.dartware.com/viewtopic.php?p=2098#2098






----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Fault isolation and map status probe thresholds
From: "Stempien, Dave" <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 15:38:32 -0500

All,

I have been a user and champion of InterMapper for over 10 years.  In my
current organization, there is a very real chance that InterMapper could
serve as our primary NMS.  Currently, InterMapper is referenced as a
"backup" to our primary NMS, Spectrum.  I maintain InterMapper in
parallel to helping maintain our primary NMS.  InterMapper doesn't take
much care and feeding beyond moves/adds/changes and hiding the
extraneous newly-discovered interfaces that magically show up on maps.

There are a few items on our desired features list that I wish I could
defend InterMapper against.  Unfortunately, I can't.  Perhaps some of
you might be willing to offer your advice on the following two items?


Fault Isolation
How are you handling fault isolation and notification suppression,
especially in multi-homed networks?  The "vantage point" solution has
been useless for us.  Our current NMS, Spectrum, handles fault
suppressions well and automatically.  If InterMapper is ever to replace
Spectrum as our NMS, I need suppression of notifications to work better.
Our engineers get cranky when they are awoken in the middle of the night
from errant and extraneous pages.  Even the ability to set manual
dependencies would be welcome.

Map Status Thresholds
Suppose I have a map status probe for a map that contains 2000 wireless
APs.  I don't want a critical notification for the map status probe if
only one of that map's devices goes down (or into alarm/warning/etc).  I
wish there could be a way to say, "set critical alarm if 100 devices
within this map are down", or, "set warning if 10% of devices within
this map are down", or something else to that effect.  That would be
very useful.  As it is, we're forced to receive a critical notification
each time a device that we deem to be low priority, such as APs or
desktop switches, goes down.  For these devices, I only want to receive
notification for a major or catastrophic condition.


Thanks in advance for your interest and help!

--
Dave Stempien
University of Rochester Medical Center
Information Systems Division
Networking/Security/Communications
(585) 784-2427

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [IM-Talk] Fault isolation
From: "Richard E. Brown" <[email protected]>
Date: 06 Jan 2010 15:47:00 -0500

Dave,

Thanks for the note. These are great questions and I'd like to learn
more from  
you and the other IM-Talk readers.

I've split your question into two, so we can keep the two threads
separate.

--- You wrote:
Fault Isolation
How are you handling fault isolation and notification suppression,
especially  
in multi-homed networks?  The "vantage point" solution has been useless
for us.  
  Our current NMS, Spectrum, handles fault suppressions well and
automatically.  
  If InterMapper is ever to replace Spectrum as our NMS, I need
suppression of  
notifications to work better.  Our engineers get cranky when they are
awoken in  
the middle of the night from errant and extraneous pages.  Even the
ability to  
set manual dependencies would be welcome.
--- end of quote ---

Could you tell a little more about your network setup? How does
multi-homing affect  
the notification suppression? (Would it be possible to get a screen
shot?)

I'll definitely look at what Spectrum does. Are there other systems that
"do it  
right?

I look forward to feedback from everyone on IM-Talk. Thanks.

Rich Brown                    [email protected]
Dartware, LLC                 http://www.dartware.com
66-7 Benning Street           Telephone: 603-643-9600
West Lebanon, NH 03784-3407   Fax: 603-643-2289

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [IM-Talk] Map status probe thresholds
From: "Richard E. Brown" <[email protected]>
Date: 06 Jan 2010 15:59:19 -0500

Folks:

Here's the second of Dave Stempian's questions.

--- Dave Stempian wrote:
Map Status Thresholds
Suppose I have a map status probe for a map that contains 2000 wireless
APs.   
I don't want a critical notification for the map status probe if only
one of that  
map's devices goes down (or into alarm/warning/etc).  I wish there could
be a  
way to say, "set critical alarm if 100 devices within this map are
down", or,  
"set warning if 10% of devices within this map are down", or something
else to  
that effect.  That would be very useful.  As it is, we're forced to
receive a  
critical notification each time a device that we deem to be low
priority, such  
as APs or desktop switches, goes down.  For these devices, I only want
to receive  
notification for a major or catastrophic condition.
--- end of quote ---

To the IM-Talk list. Are there other use cases/places you would use
something  
like this?

NB I saw a similar application with the check_multi Nagios plugin, that
has a  
facility for something like this (see the "State Definition" at
http://my-plugin.de/wiki/projects/check_multi/configuration/file#state_-
_state_definition  
)

Best regards,

Rich Brown                    [email protected]
Dartware, LLC                 http://www.dartware.com
66-7 Benning Street           Telephone: 603-643-9600
West Lebanon, NH 03784-3407   Fax: 603-643-2289

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Subject: Re: [IM-Talk] Map status probe thresholds
From: "Michael Graziano" <[email protected]>
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 2010 16:57:09 -0500

On Jan 6, 2010, at 3:59 PM, Richard E. Brown wrote:
>
> --- Dave Stempian wrote:
> Map Status Thresholds
> Suppose I have a map status probe for a map that contains 2000  
> wireless APs.  I don't want a critical notification for the map  
> status probe if only one of that map's devices goes down (or into  
> alarm/warning/etc).  I wish there could be a way to say, "set  
> critical alarm if 100 devices within this map are down", or, "set  
> warning if 10% of devices within this map are down", or something  
> else to that effect.
> --- end of quote ---
>
> To the IM-Talk list. Are there other use cases/places you would use  
> something like this?
>
> NB I saw a similar application with the check_multi Nagios plugin,  
> that has a facility for something like this (see the "State  
> Definition" at
http://my-plugin.de/wiki/projects/check_multi/configuration/file#state_-
_state_definition 
>  )

I don't have an immediate use for this functionality, but I can  
definitely see it being useful in compute farms / clusters where you  
would want to know if some percentage of your systems were offline/ 
overloaded/etc as well as in Dan's wireless AP case above.

The Nagios check_multi plugin looks like a good conceptual starting  
point for a custom map status probe: InterMapper provides some basic  
variables (total devices + number {OK, warning, alarm, critical, down,  
unknown}) and probe writers set up appropriate parameters, calculation  
variables & conditions the same way we do for SNMP probes.

Something could be cobbled together to fill the immediate need using  
the new API in 5.2 (ugly perl + command line probe) but I think an  
integrated map status custom probe type in a future version would be a  
good addition...

-MG

----------------------------------------------------------------------
End of InterMapper-Talk Digest

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