Re: [Nagios-users] circular parent/child chain

2012-11-20 Thread Andreas Ericsson 
On 11/19/2012 07:57 PM, Lucy Pelzer wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1
 
 Hi List,
 
 thanks for your fast replies, but I think you missed my point. I know
 that I could configure one parent and alert about spanning tree or do a
 lot of other stuff, but this would not help me at all in the following
 situations.
 
 Lets say that I have a lot of important infrastructure behind switch-4
 and switch-5 and that the normal stp way is to route through switch-2
 for switch-5 and for switch-4 to switch-3. Lets also suggest that at
 switch-2 there is not that much important infrastructure. If now
 switch-2 is failing at the same time a really important infrastructure
 behind switch-5 fails. I will only get informed that switch-2 failed,
 because switch-5 is a child of switch-2, but I will not be informed
 about the more important stuff at switch-5. Now I will spend a lot of
 time to exchange switch-2 before I even find out that there is something
 really important at switch-5 going on only because I could not give it a
 second parent (switch-4). Maybe the other problem would have been fixed
 in minutes if I would have known about it. I think it is a bad idea to
 have such parent/child chains. And please keep in mind that this is just
 a simple example and that a network can be much bigger than just 5 switches.
 
 The other point is that I will never see the real network infrastructure
 in the statusmap. As far as I can read the documentation I should also
 be able to build up my whole infrastructure like it is in the statusmap.
 Or for what is it at all?
 

parent/child relations are primarily to block notifications for stuff that
is only down because some earlier stage in the traffic shoveling is down.

 I would be really pleased if somebody could answer my question.
 
 - - Why is it in nagios not possible to be parent/child of a other host at
 the same time?
 - - Why is it a deadlock and where is the problem?
 

Because if A is a parent of B and B is a parent of A we'd never run out
of parents to check when trying to determine the root cause of the
problem.

-- 
Andreas Ericsson   andreas.erics...@op5.se
OP5 AB www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225  Fax: +46 8-230231

Considering the successes of the wars on alcohol, poverty, drugs and
terror, I think we should give some serious thought to declaring war
on peace.

--
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Re: [Nagios-users] circular parent/child chain

2012-11-19 Thread Andreas Ericsson 
On 11/17/2012 06:08 PM, Lucy Pelzer wrote:
 -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
 Hash: SHA1
 
 Hi List,
 
 I am in charge for a big network infrastructure and at the moment we
 evaluate solutions for our nagios monitoring with configuration via
 monarch. I really would like to create the new solution with nagios and
 puppet. There is only one big problem. In our infrastructure there are a
 lot of switches connected together like this:
 

| switch-1 |

  /   \
 / \
/   \
 
| switch-2 |-| switch-3 |
 
 | |
 | |
 
| switch-5 |-| switch-4 |
 
 
 All the time I try to configure this switch connections in nagios with
 more than one parent, where the hosts are at the same time parent and
 child, I get the following error:
 
 ERROR: The host 'switch-2' is part of a circular parent/child chain!
 ...
 
 I know by now that this is because nagios has to be hierarchically, but
 I do not understand why. Maybe somebody could tell me exactly why I
 can’t configure this in nagios or better could tell me how I can do it.
 I only found the explanation that this could conduct a deadlock. Maybe I
 am wrong, but is this not a likely network infrastructure? At last it is
 no problem to build something like this with STP running in your network.
 

It is, but parent-child relations concern network data flows, and not
necessarily the cables connecting various pieces of equipment.

In your case switch5 should have switch2 as parent, switch4 should have
switch3 as parent, switch2 and switch3 should both have switch1 as
parent.

Think of how the traffic goes. It will never travel like this:
  switch1 - switch2 - switch3 - switch4
but it will travel like this:
  switch1 - switch3 - switch4

(assuming you have a somewhat sane network, that is).

-- 
Andreas Ericsson   andreas.erics...@op5.se
OP5 AB www.op5.se
Tel: +46 8-230225  Fax: +46 8-230231

Considering the successes of the wars on alcohol, poverty, drugs and
terror, I think we should give some serious thought to declaring war
on peace.

--
Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single
web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware,
SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial.
Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications!
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Re: [Nagios-users] circular parent/child chain

2012-11-19 Thread Lucy Pelzer 
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi List,

thanks for your fast replies, but I think you missed my point. I know
that I could configure one parent and alert about spanning tree or do a
lot of other stuff, but this would not help me at all in the following
situations.

Lets say that I have a lot of important infrastructure behind switch-4
and switch-5 and that the normal stp way is to route through switch-2
for switch-5 and for switch-4 to switch-3. Lets also suggest that at
switch-2 there is not that much important infrastructure. If now
switch-2 is failing at the same time a really important infrastructure
behind switch-5 fails. I will only get informed that switch-2 failed,
because switch-5 is a child of switch-2, but I will not be informed
about the more important stuff at switch-5. Now I will spend a lot of
time to exchange switch-2 before I even find out that there is something
really important at switch-5 going on only because I could not give it a
second parent (switch-4). Maybe the other problem would have been fixed
in minutes if I would have known about it. I think it is a bad idea to
have such parent/child chains. And please keep in mind that this is just
a simple example and that a network can be much bigger than just 5 switches.

The other point is that I will never see the real network infrastructure
in the statusmap. As far as I can read the documentation I should also
be able to build up my whole infrastructure like it is in the statusmap.
Or for what is it at all?

I would be really pleased if somebody could answer my question.

- - Why is it in nagios not possible to be parent/child of a other host at
the same time?
- - Why is it a deadlock and where is the problem?


Greetings
Lucy

On 17.11.2012 21:44, Giles Coochey wrote:
 On 17/11/2012 17:08, Lucy Pelzer wrote:
 Hi List,
 
 I am in charge for a big network infrastructure and at the moment we
 evaluate solutions for our nagios monitoring with configuration via
 monarch. I really would like to create the new solution with nagios and
 puppet. There is only one big problem. In our infrastructure there are a
 lot of switches connected together like this:
 

| switch-1 |

  /   \
 / \
/   \
 
| switch-2 |-| switch-3 |
 
 | |
 | |
 
| switch-5 |-| switch-4 |
 
 Hi Lucy,
 
 Although you have redundant physical interconnects for your switches,
 Spanning Tree, or Rapid Spanning Tree or even Multiple Spanning Tree
 protocols are taking effect and (probably) setting switch-1 as the Root
 with the other switches set to a higher spanning tree priority value -
 in any case, at layer two, during normal operation you don't have
 multiple active parents in the layer-2 infrastructure.
 
 While you have redundancy, physically for your infrastructure, you are
 only using those links (for each VLAN at least), in a non-redundant way.
 
 Setup your Nagios child / parent relationships as per spanning tree has
 worked out how it should be when everything is up, add some monitoring
 for spanning-tree within Nagios, that way everything will work, and
 you'll always be informed when something is wrong.
 
 Thanks
 
 Giles
 
 
 All the time I try to configure this switch connections in nagios with
 more than one parent, where the hosts are at the same time parent and
 child, I get the following error:
 
 ERROR: The host 'switch-2' is part of a circular parent/child chain!
 ...
 
 I know by now that this is because nagios has to be hierarchically, but
 I do not understand why. Maybe somebody could tell me exactly why I
 can’t configure this in nagios or better could tell me how I can do it.
 I only found the explanation that this could conduct a deadlock. Maybe I
 am wrong, but is this not a likely network infrastructure? At last it is
 no problem to build something like this with STP running in your network.
 
 
 Great Thanks in advanced
 
 Lucy

 --

 Monitor your physical, virtual and cloud infrastructure from a single
 web console. Get in-depth insight into apps, servers, databases, vmware,
 SAP, cloud infrastructure, etc. Download 30-day Free Trial.
 Pricing starts from $795 for 25 servers or applications!
 http://p.sf.net/sfu/zoho_dev2dev_nov
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 Nagios-users mailing list
 Nagios-users@lists.sourceforge.net
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 reporting any issue.
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[Nagios-users] circular parent/child chain

2012-11-17 Thread Lucy Pelzer 
-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi List,

I am in charge for a big network infrastructure and at the moment we
evaluate solutions for our nagios monitoring with configuration via
monarch. I really would like to create the new solution with nagios and
puppet. There is only one big problem. In our infrastructure there are a
lot of switches connected together like this:

  
  | switch-1 |
  
/   \
   / \
  /   \
   
  | switch-2 |-| switch-3 |
   
   | |
   | |
   
  | switch-5 |-| switch-4 |
   

All the time I try to configure this switch connections in nagios with
more than one parent, where the hosts are at the same time parent and
child, I get the following error:

ERROR: The host 'switch-2' is part of a circular parent/child chain!
...

I know by now that this is because nagios has to be hierarchically, but
I do not understand why. Maybe somebody could tell me exactly why I
can’t configure this in nagios or better could tell me how I can do it.
I only found the explanation that this could conduct a deadlock. Maybe I
am wrong, but is this not a likely network infrastructure? At last it is
no problem to build something like this with STP running in your network.


Great Thanks in advanced

Lucy
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Re: [Nagios-users] circular parent/child chain

2012-11-17 Thread Giles Coochey 

On 17/11/2012 17:08, Lucy Pelzer wrote:

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Hi List,

I am in charge for a big network infrastructure and at the moment we
evaluate solutions for our nagios monitoring with configuration via
monarch. I really would like to create the new solution with nagios and
puppet. There is only one big problem. In our infrastructure there are a
lot of switches connected together like this:

   
   | switch-1 |
   
 /   \
/ \
   /   \
    
   | switch-2 |-| switch-3 |
    
| |
| |
    
   | switch-5 |-| switch-4 |
    

Hi Lucy,

Although you have redundant physical interconnects for your switches, 
Spanning Tree, or Rapid Spanning Tree or even Multiple Spanning Tree 
protocols are taking effect and (probably) setting switch-1 as the Root 
with the other switches set to a higher spanning tree priority value - 
in any case, at layer two, during normal operation you don't have 
multiple active parents in the layer-2 infrastructure.


While you have redundancy, physically for your infrastructure, you are 
only using those links (for each VLAN at least), in a non-redundant way.


Setup your Nagios child / parent relationships as per spanning tree has 
worked out how it should be when everything is up, add some monitoring 
for spanning-tree within Nagios, that way everything will work, and 
you'll always be informed when something is wrong.


Thanks

Giles



All the time I try to configure this switch connections in nagios with
more than one parent, where the hosts are at the same time parent and
child, I get the following error:

ERROR: The host 'switch-2' is part of a circular parent/child chain!
...

I know by now that this is because nagios has to be hierarchically, but
I do not understand why. Maybe somebody could tell me exactly why I
can’t configure this in nagios or better could tell me how I can do it.
I only found the explanation that this could conduct a deadlock. Maybe I
am wrong, but is this not a likely network infrastructure? At last it is
no problem to build something like this with STP running in your network.


Great Thanks in advanced

Lucy
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Regards,

Giles Coochey, CCNA, CCNAS
NetSecSpec Ltd
+44 (0) 7983 877438
http://www.coochey.net
http://www.netsecspec.co.uk
gi...@coochey.net




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