eG - Administration
 

SNMP Utility

eG Enterprise uses SNMP to monitor the performance of network devices. If any test mapped to such a device fails to report all/a few metrics, administrators may want to rapidly diagnose the reason for the same and fix it, so as to ensure the uninterrupted monitoring of the target. To facilitate this, eG Enterprise provides an SNMP Utility. With the help of this utility, administrators can have the eG external agent poll the SNMP MIB of the target device on-the-fly and fetch the output for any configured OID. This can be the OID of the failed measure, or that of any measure reported by a failed test. If the OID does not return a valid output, then the administrators can quickly conclude that incorrect test configuration or persistent network issues are probably hampering the monitoring of the device. By changing the test configuration and by resolving the network issues, administrators ensure the continuous monitoring of the device.

The SNMP Utility page appears if you click the SNMP Utility option from the Micellaneous tile of the Admin tile menu. The SNMP Utility page lists a set of parameters to be configured to generate the SNMP Subtree and SNMPWALK output. To know how to configure the parameters, follow the steps given below:

  1. Specify the IP address of the component that is to be monitored in the Host IP text box.

  2. Enter the SNMP port at which the monitored target exposes its SNMP MIB in the SNMP port text box; the default is 161.

  3. By default, the eG agent supports SNMP version 1. Accordingly, the default selection in the SNMP version list is v1. However, if a different SNMP framework is in use in your environment, say SNMP v2 or v3, then select the corresponding option from this list.

  4. The SNMP Community name that the test uses to communicate with the target component. This parameter is specific to SNMP v1 and v2 only. Therefore, if the SNMP version chosen is v3, then this parameter will not appear.

  5. If you select v3 as SNMP version, then the following parameters will appear additionally:

    • A SNMP context is a collection of management information accessible by an SNMP entity. An item of management information may exist in more than one context and an SNMP entity potentially has access to many contexts. A Context is identified by the SNMPEngineID value of the entity hosting the management information (also called a contextEngineID) and a context name that identifies the specific Context (also called a contextName). If the Username provided is associated with a context name, then the eG agent will be able to poll the MIB and collect metrics only if it is configured with the context name as well. In such cases therefore, specify the context name of the Username in the Context text box. By default, this parameter is set to none.

    • SNMP version 3 (SNMPv3) is an extensible SNMP Framework which supplements the SNMPv2 Framework, by additionally supporting message security, access control, and remote SNMP configuration capabilities. To extract performance statistics from the MIB using the highly secure SNMP v3 protocol, the eG agent has to be configured with the required access privileges - in other words, the eG agent should connect to the MIB using the credentials of a user with access permissions to MIB. Therefore, specify the name of such a user against the Username parameter. 

    • Specify the Auth password that corresponds to the above-mentioned Username.

    • Confirm the Auth password parameter by retyping it in the Confirm password text box.

    • From the Auth type list box, choose the authentication algorithm using which SNMP v3 converts the specified Username and Auth password into a 32-bit format to ensure security of SNMP transactions. You can choose between the following options:

      • MD5 - Message Digest Algorithm
      • SHA - Secure Hash Algorithm

    • By default, the eG agent does not encrypt SNMP requests. Accordingly, the Encryption enabled flag is set to No by default. To ensure that SNMP requests sent by the eG agent are encrypted, select the Yes option.

    • If Encryption enabled is set to Yes, then you will have to mention the encryption type by selecting an option from the Encryption type list. SNMP v3 supports the following encryption types:

      • DES - Data Encryption Standard
      • AES - Advanced Encryption Standard

    • Specify the encryption password in the Encryption password text box.

    • Confirm the encryption password by retyping it in the Confirm encryption password text box.

  6. By default, in an IT environment, all data transmission occurs over UDP. Some environments however, may be specifically configured to offload a fraction of the data traffic - for instance, certain types of data traffic or traffic pertaining to specific components - to other protocols like TCP, so as to prevent UDP overloads. In such environments, you can instruct the eG agent to conduct the SNMP data traffic related to the monitored target over TCP (and not UDP). For this, set the Data over TCP flag to Yes. By default, this flag is set to No.

  7. Provide OID of an object of your interest in the OID text box. You can also choose OID of any object from MIB file of the target component instead of specifying it manually. The first step towards this is to upload the MIB of the target component to the eG manager; the MIB file typically, contain the OID-object name mappings. To know how to upload the MIB file, click here.

  8. Select the eG external agent that will monitor the target component from the External agent list.

  9. Once you have configured all the parameters, click the Get Subtree button to view the subtree output for the chosen OID. To know more, click here.

  10. To view the SNMPWALK output for the chosen OID, click the SNMP Walk button in this page. To know more, click here.

    11. Note:

    • You cannot generate SNMP Subtree and SNMPWALK output if the parameters you specified in the SNMP Utility page do not match with the SNMP configuration of the component to be monitored. In such cases, a message prompt stating “No Data Found” will appear.

    • The SNMPWALK output cannot be generated for the component that is being monitored using an eG agent installed on a Linux host.