SiteScope User's Guide

SNMP Trap Monitor

The SNMP Trap Monitor watches for SNMP Traps received by SiteScope from other devices. The agents for the SNMP enabled devices need to be configured to send traps to the SiteScope server.

Note: To have SiteScope query a specific device for a specific value, use the SNMP Monitor.

Usage Guidelines

Why should I use this monitor?

The SNMP Trap Monitor is useful for automatically collecting SNMP Traps from other devices. With SiteScope doing this for you at set intervals, you can eliminate the need to check for the SNMP Traps manually. In addition, you can be notified of warning conditions that you might have otherwise been unaware of until something more serious happened. Each time that it runs this monitor, SiteScope checks traps that have been received since the last time it ran.

Note: The SiteScope SNMP Trap Monitor uses port 162 for receiving traps. If another application or process on the machine where SiteScope is running has bound this port, the monitor will report an "Address in use" error and the monitor type will be unavailable.

Completing the SNMP Trap Monitor Form

To display the SNMP Trap Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing SNMP Trap Monitor in a monitor table, or click the add a Monitor link on a group's detail page and choose the "Add SNMP Trap Monitor" link.

Complete the items on the SNMP Trap Monitor Form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

Note: You will also need to configure the network devices to send SNMP Traps to SiteScope. On Windows 2000 systems, this can be configured via the Admninistrative Tools-->Services-->SNMP Service-->Properties-->Traps screen. SNMP agents on UNIX platforms usually require that you edit the configuration files associated with the agent. For an example of working with other devices, see the instructions on the Cisco web site for SNMP Traps and Cisco Devices

Content Match

Enter the text to look for in SNMP Traps. Regular expressions may also be used in this box.

All of the SNMP Traps received by SiteScope are logged to SiteScope/logs/SNMPTrap.log

For example, the following shows two traps received from one router and another trap received from a second router:

09:08:35 09/10/2001	from=router1/10.0.0.133	oid=.1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.17.1	trap=link down	specific=0	traptime=1000134506	community=public	agent=router1/10.0.0.133	var1=The interface Serial1 is down
09:08:45 09/10/2001	from=router1/10.0.0.133	oid=.1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.17.1	trap=link up	specific=0	traptime=1000134520	community=public	agent=router1/10.0.0.133	var1=The interface Serial1 is up
09:10:55 09/10/2001	from=router2/10.0.0.134	oid=.1.3.6.1.4.1.11.2.17.1	trap=enterprise specific	specific=1000	traptime=1000134652	community=public	agent=router2/10.0.0.134	var1=CPU usage is above 90%

Run Alert

Choose the method for running alerts. If "for each event matched" is chosen, then the monitor triggers alerts for every matching entry found.

NOTE When the SNMP Trap Monitor is run in the "for each event matched" alert method, the monitor will never report a status of error or warning, regardless of the results of the content match or even if the target SNMP Trap is not found.

If the "once, after all events have been checked" method is chosen, then the monitor counts up the number of matches and triggers alerts based on the "Error If" and "Warning If" thresholds defined for the monitor in the Advanced Options section.

Update every

Enter how frequently the monitor should read the application SNMP Trap. The drop-down list to the right of the text box lets you specify time increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. You must specify a time increment of at least 15 seconds.

Title (Optional)

Enter a name for this monitor. This name appears in the Name text box on the monitor table when you open the group's detail page. If you don't enter a name, a default name will be created.

Advanced Options

The advanced options give you the ability to customize error and warning thresholds. If you choose not to set them, SiteScope will use pre-set defaults if available. If a default is not available, SiteScope will not be able to utilize the condition.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

This options allows you to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule (Optional)

By default, SiteScope's monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Choose the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For information about creating schedules, read these instructions.

Monitor Description (Optional)

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description (Optional)

Enter a description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what this monitor does. The description will appear on Management Reports and on the info list for a monitor.

Depends On (Optional)

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor or group on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition (Optional)

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, choose the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor or group on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order (Optional)

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Error if

Set an error threshold for this monitor. The thresholds are used when the "Run Alerts: once, ..." option is chosen. By default, an error is signalled whenever there is one or more matching events. Select a comparison value from the list, and use the comparison operator list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than).

The possible comparison values are:

matches - the number of matches found.
lines - the number of lines processed.
lines/min - the number of lines per minute processed during this monitoring period.
matches/min - the number of matches per minute that occurred during this monitoring period.

Warning if

Set the Warning threshold for this monitor. The default is to generate a warning if SiteScope is unable to read the SNMP Trap. The symbols in the comparison value drop-down list are the same as those for Error if.

Good if

The default is to mark the monitor as good if the SNMP Trap can be read and there are no matches.