xSNMP Management Pack Suite Version 1.1.0 (Beta)
March 11, 2010 48 Comments
After weeks of pilot testing, the xSNMP Suite version 1.1.0 is ready for public beta release. In addition to some bug fixes and feature enhancements, this release includes four completely new management packs:
- xSNMP Juniper-NetScreen MP: Implements comprehensive monitoring of NetScreen firewall devices
- xSNMP NetApp MP: Implements comprehensive monitoring of NetApp storage devices
- xSNMP Sun Hardware MP: Implements monitoring of Sun Server hardware, through the SunFire Management Agent, Sun ILOM out-of-band management interface, or the Fujitsu XSCF out-of-band management interface
- xSNMP Dell PowerEdge MP: Implements monitoring of hardware for Dell PowerEdge devices via the Dell OpenManage agent or DRAC out-of-band management interface
These management packs are in addition to the other 11 management packs previously included in the suite:
- xSNMP Management Pack – Implements filtered discovery and monitoring of SNMP devices and interfaces that support the standard RFC1213 MIB, IF-MIB, and EtherLike-MIB. This management pack is the core of the xSNMP Suite and contains public datasources that are utilized in the other optional management packs.
- xSNMP Overrides Management Pack – This unsealed management pack can be used as a container for overrides, but also provides preconfigured groups and overrides for easily controlling interface monitoring through groups of network interfaces.
- xSNMP APC Managment Pack – Implements monitoring for APC Rackmount PDU, UPS, Automatic Transfer Switch, and Environmental Monitor devices.
- xSNMP Brocade Management Pack – Implements chassis monitoring for Brocade Fibre-Channel switch devices (Fibre-Channel ports are monitored as network interfaces with the xSNMP MP).
- xSNMP Check Point Secure Platform Management Pack – Implements module health and firewall HA failover monitoring for Check Point Secure Platform firewall devices.
- xSNMP Cisco Management Pack – Implements additional monitoring for Cisco devices, primarily including chassis hardware moniotring for devices that support the EnvMon MIB, Entity-MB, or Cisco-Stack MIB.
- xSNMP Data Domain Management Pack – Implements monitoring for the performance, hardware status, and replication status of Data Domain Restorer storage appliances.
- xSNMP HP ProCurve Management Pack – Implements component health monitoring for HP ProCurve switches and wireless access points.
- xSNMP HP Proliant Management Pack – Implements hardware health monitoring for SNMP-enabled HP servers that support the Proliant Insight Management Agents.
- xSNMP Net-SNMP Management Pack – Implements operating system monitoring for Net-SNMP agent devices, such as UNIX/Linux servers through the UCD and Host-Resources MIBs.
- xSNMP Syslog Management Pack – Provides warning and critical alert generating rules that can be enabled and filtered with overrides to alert on incoming syslog messages from discovered SNMP devices.
Behind the scenes, significant improvements have been made in the class structure and shared data source configuration in the root xSNMP MP. These changes facilitate better organization and easier future development of dependent management packs. These changes are probably best illustrated with a screenshot of the improved xSNMP base class hierarchy:
I greatly appreciate the testing carried out by the volunteer pilot testers, as well as all of the feedback from those who have tested the xSNMP MP’s, but I specifically want to thank Chris L. for all of his assistance in every stage of the development of the NetScreen MP, as well as Raphael Burri for all of his help in designing the organizational improvements in the xSNMP MP.
The updated xSNMP Suite can be downloaded here.
Note: One impact of the reorganization in the xSNMP MP is that direct upgrade from previous versions is not possible and the xSNMP MP’s must be removed prior to importing the new version. To assist in this regard, I have provided a PowerShell script which can be used to automate the upgrade process and preserve configured overrides (in most cases). The prerequisites and procedures for upgrading are covered in detail in the Upgrading_xSNMP_To_1.1.0 document that is included in the download package.
About Kristopher Bash
Operating-Quadrant 
Thanks for the updates Kris! Btw, on the downloads page the description of the download is still the old version.
Thanks for pointing that out!
I just tried to import xSNMP.Cisco.xml but it requires xSNMP 1.1.0.10 however xSNMP.xml is version 1.1.0.19.
I was able to import xSNMP.Cisco.xml with xSNMP.mp.
I would like to stick entirely to xml if possible. Any suggestions?
Mike,
Thanks for your comment. Unfortunately, this is not a viable option. In order to maintain the dependent relationships between the management packs, the xSNMP MP must be imported as a sealed (.mp) management pack. Importing the depedent management packs (other than the xSNMP Overrides MP) in their raw .xml source form will also create problems when future updates are provided. In order to store overrides for an MP in another MP, the targeted MP must be sealed. If you used the unseaeld management packs and created overrides, these would be lost the next time you imported an updated version. The .xml versions of the MP’s are provided purely as source code, and not intended to be imported in that form.
Hope this helps,
Kris
Thanks for all of your hard work on this.
Request: Support for Fortinet firewalls (FortiGate) via SNMP.
Thanks again,
Kevan
Yes, please support Fortinet firewalls too!
Thank you Kris for a superb MP!
I have 160 snmp devices in SCOM covered by this MP…so I can confirm the MP’s rock!!
You need to get a “Donate” button organised.
Aengus
Hello !!!
Excellent MP, great work !!!
I used it for CISCO and HP ProCurve devices. There are some bugs:
1. For CISCO. Device – switch 3560G. The device was right discovered (device itself, network interfaces,…). The problem is some network interfaces that really have “Physical Connection Present” not have this flag in their properties in SCOM. Because of that SCOM alerted on network interfaces that had down (InterfaceDown – State) and I can’t create dynamic rule for exclude these network interfaces.
These management packs are amazing, thanks for all the time you’ve spent on them. I’m interested in writing/acquiring one for Sonicwall devices, specifically to monitor VPN activity.
I part wrote one based on just the normal Network Devices, but I’m having issues with the VPNs as the OIDs are a bit random eg:
.1.3.6.1.4.1.8741.1.3.2.1.1.1.13.2051734120
.1.3.6.1.4.1.8741.1.3.2.1.1.1.14.2051734120
where 2051734120 is a connection ID and the only real reference to each VPN, and changes on each reconnection of the tunnel. Is this something that is possible to gather together using your class?
Do you intend making a small tutorial using your class or even better building a sonicwall MP?
Great work! xSNMP Suite Rulezzz!
Wish that will be added support for QLOGIC FC-switches in next release.
from Russia with respect
Алексей Рыжков aka KidNAPa
Chris and Raphael, this is some very, VERY good stuff! One issue I have noticed is a tremendous performance impact on the mangement server I am using as a proxy agent for SNMP devices since importing these MPs. Could this be alleviated by updating Powershell on that management server to version 2.0?
I completely agree with AengusM, you need to add a DONATE button somewhere on here as soon as possible! Any chance I can contribute by working on an MP for Riverbed devices?
Thank you for your comment. Regarding the performance impact, can you elaborate on how many devices/interfaces you are monitoring? As far as I know, I don’t believe that PowerShell v2 is supported with OpsMgr (have you seen otherwise)?
I’m not familiar with Riverbed devices, but one of these days, I am going to put together a Management Pack development kit for the xSNMP MP’s that documents creating MP’s with the provided data sources and classes. Once I finish the Oracle MP that I am working on, I hope to make some progress in that area. If you wanted to get started, you could probably start by dissecting the provided MP’s and I can fill in any gaps by answering any questions you may have.
Currently there are roughly 150 managed devices, and of the 1700+ interfaces discovered, only 100 are monitored (status only).
Those numbers shouldn’t result in a significant performance impact, other than during the initial discovery. The initial discovery process is expected to be pretty demanding, but after that you shouldn’t see such major performance impact. How much difference are you seeing in CPU utilization? Can you check the OpsMgr event log to make sure that the healthservice isn’t restarting every 10 minutes due to a handle count or private bytes threshold? That could explain the issue if it’s happening. Thanks
Well, it did finally detect it, one issue, however. I get a lot of errors on things like the checkdevicestatus, etc.
Always with a status of 0x6c.
Daren
Daren,
Thanks for reporting this issue. The 0x6c error is a timeout error. Are all of the errors related to one SNMP device or do they affect multiple SNMP devices?
Interestingly enough the APC pack identifies my UPS and it identifies my smaller environmental monitoring device. But it doesn’t identify the other device. I have the base OIDs. Let me know if you need any mibs, but i am not sure why it doesnt like it. The one that does not work doesnt even’t even show up anywhere in the xSNMP sections.
OID 1 (works) : 1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.3.8.3
OID 2 (Isnt seen) : 1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.3.8.4
Daren
I’ve added two Checkpoint Nokia IP560 devices to SCOM. They’re not appearing under Check Point SPlat Devices, but they do appear under the stock Network Devices. Are these supported with the xSNMP management pack?
At this point, the CheckPoint SPlat MP only supports Secure Platform devices, not the CheckPoint Nokia systems. I hope to work Nokia device support in soon.
Hello!
APC management pack has an System OID subtree missing – .1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.3.22.* – it’s symmetraPX UPS devices – we have 2 of them.
My powernet mib also contains .1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.3.27 as smartUPS2, we don’t have such devices, but i suppose they may exist.
And another question – are next releases of xSNMP management packs expected to be “compatible” in terms of SCOM? I’m going to deploy these management pack in production environment, where we have a lot of overrides and groups membership for discovered objects, and ability to upgrade is very important for me.
oops, small mistake – .1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.3.23.* – symmetraPX
Yes, I am getting timeouts but ONLY from this device. Also the probes are not all detected properly. Is there anything I can capture and email to you so you can understand?
I have 3 APC devices, a 2 port env monitor (works great), a 10k UPS (also works great), and a AP3940 which is expandable. This last one gives me grief because the probes are based on the unit they are connected to. I have 12 probes connected to a device and a slaved unit.
Also with the Brocade one, I would like to be able to gather performance statistics and error statistics for reporting in SCOM.
Wow…impressive work! I am just headed into the network device monitoring options for SCOM. I have looked at Solarwinds and Whatsup gold, and while they look nice, I hate to use 2 different consoles to monitor my network.
Then I looked at Jalasoft…same deal, looks like a nice package, but maybe not for 15k 😉
Then I stumbled on this, added 2 MPs, and 15 minutes later I am monitoring my HP switches like I almost know what im doing! haha
How long do you plan to support this xSNMP package?
Any thoughts on adding a Nortel switches? Can you contact me for details on them? Really a great blog, I appreciate your contribution to all the people out there begging for such MPs 🙂
I find out that xSNMP Cisco MP didn’t discover a number of interfaces of “Tunnel” type. What’s wrong?
IS there any way to use xSNMP and the new feature in LiveMaps to automate network diagrams?
I haven’t tried it out actually. If you get a chance to test LiveMaps with xSNMP, I’d be glad to hear about it. Thanks for your comment.
We’ve been using your Cisco MP for a while in LiveMaps and it works great!
The xSNMP works great too, however it doesn’t have the Automatic Network Topology Mapping…which would be brilliant.
The demo on SAVision’s website shows how JalaSoft’s Xian Network populates Ops Manager with information about the connections between devices, i.e. router X has switch Y plugged into interface 3 and switch Y has server Z plugged into interface 9.
This makes topology diagrams a breeze!
Anyways would like to say thanks for the MP’s and for showing us how to write management packs!
Currently only the Jalasoft Xian MP supports discovering links between computers and network device ports. See the video from Savision for this.
The automatic network discovery button in LiveMaps stays greyed-out when using xSNMP and computer objects in a drawing. So I don’t think it’s going to work with the current xSNMP suite.
Michiel,
Yep. That is correct. From Savision support:
“Jalasoft is currently the only MP provider that discovers network topology and stores it in OpsMgr. Microsoft is planning to add this functionality in OpsMgr vNext.
There will be more MP providers that will discover and store topology info in OpsMgr. Live Maps is capable of handling these different network topology relationships.”
Would be really useful if xSNMP could store topology info in OpsMgr…hint hint…:)
nice work with this mp.
as i can see you’re registering mibs of cisco in the setup… can i register additional mibs by myself to extend the range of SNMP IDs/Traps scom can understand?
We tested the version 1.1.0 with our ProCurve switches, and unfortunately its useless 😦
Two switches as example:
HP J4813A ProCurve Switch 2524, revision F.05.72, ROM F.02.01
ProCurve J9147A 2910al-48G Switch, revision W.14.38, ROM W.14.04
Physical Connection Present is empty, except for the DEFAULT_VLAN Interface, where the property is 2.
Alle performance counters (except the one for the CPU utilization) are empty.
Maybe there is some kind of bad mismatch?
We would really like to help to debug the problem and investigate further in testing.
Thomas
wow amazing MP and am seriously impressed with it’s depth and the fact you plug straight into SCOM rather than Quests MP’s which have the separate console. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE is there any chance you may create add ons for Juniper J and EX Series switches and routers though? I am working for a client who has SRX firewalls, EX and J Series switches and no Netscreen. Would love to see this as an addition
Hey Kris –
Awesome management pack! I’m testing out the Dell PowerEdge, APC and Cisco packs now. I was wondering something regarding the APC management pack. Do you know if it supports Netbotz devices? Netbotz is owned by APC and the MP that APC built does support them, but I’m not sure about the xSNMP pack. Thanks!
I am really excited about using this mp, but i have not figured out how to enable the monitoring of the interfaces. It look straight forward, but in using the Override mp nothing happens and the interfaces discovered are never monitored. Can anyone assist, what am I doing wrong.
Using the:
xsnmp mp
xsnmo override mp
Xsnmp Cisco
xsnmp brocade.
Currently have a Cisco PIX and 10G switch being monitored
Thanks in advance.
D
Hi Don,
I agree. they are really nice and pretty easy to implement.
Just need to read the docs carefully.
Check the interfaces types that are defined inside xsnmp network interfaces groups.
For Brocade FC interfaces Kris say the following:
“My Brocade management pack depends on the Brocade switch’s SNMP implementation reporting FibreChannel interfaces in the RFC-1213 ifTable. I chose not to discover interfaces in this MP from the Brocade specific SNMP tables, because newer Brocade firmware versions expose FC interfaces in the iftable, and I did not want to have duplicate interface monitoring.
This article on HP’s website seems to describe the firmware versions required by Brocade switches to support FC interfaces in the ifTable: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=402271&prodTypeId=12169&objectID=c01941079
Brocade 3800 and 2800 will never respond to the MIB 1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.2 as it was not implemented in its FOS. So to reply with the “FC ports” every switch has to be upgraded to 6.3.0, except in case of the 24000 that they will have to upgrade to 5.3.2c.
Enjoy yourself.
Maria
Hi
you need to configure the rules section in SCOm to monitor specific performance targets. Contact me if you need help but basically
go Authoring
-Rules
Look for:cisco
then go to Type: xSNMP Cisco Network Interface
You will see these are not monitored by default so you need to Enable them by configuring overrides. I create Groups of Interfaces for my switches/routers so as not to collect all information about every switch
To monitor an interface you can just create an override to enable the rule. It will take ten minutes or so to show up in
Monitoring/Perfromance Data
hope that helps!
First of thank you for this great mp!
I have only a problem to integrade the ILOM to System Center Operations Manager 2007. In your documentation you say, that the ILOM have to use the SUN-PLATFORM-MIB and I think here is the problem.
We use a X4600 M2
http://blogs.sun.com/barrettblog/entry/walking_the_system_hardware_snmp
…The problem with the SUN-PLATFORM-MIB on these platforms was that it was traping out IPMI event numeric codes….
I am not sure whether there is a layer 8 error or it is not supportet to use the SNMP-agent on this ILOM.
I am very grateful for any help!
Thomas
Hi,
I want to know if Cisco management pack allows to surpervise all cisco devices.
thanks in advance
I could not find from where i can download xSNMP Suite version 1.1.0 MP
James
Hi Kris,
Please let me know from where i can download xSNMP Suite version 1.1.0 MP pack form SCOM 2007 R2
On the xSNMP Network INterface Status (SNMP Trap) monitor, viewing the properties of this monitor produces the following error:
Invalid character in a Base-64 string.
Details
_______
Note: The following information was gathered when the operation was attempted. The information may appear cryptic but provides context for the error. The application will continue to run.
System.FormatException: Invalid character in a Base-64 string.
at System.Convert.FromBase64String(String s)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Pages.SnmpTrapProviderPage.LoadConfig()
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Pages.SnmpTrapProviderPage.OnLoad(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl(Boolean fIgnoreVisible)
at System.Windows.Forms.Control.CreateControl()
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Extensibility.PageWrapper.LoadPageConfig()
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Extensibility.PageWrapper.OnPageAdded()
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.ConsoleFramework.SheetFramework.AddPage(Page page)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Extensibility.PageManagerBase.AttachToFramework(IPageFramework pageFramework, Boolean readOnly)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Extensibility.MomExtensionsCommon.AddMonitorPages(LaunchMonitorUICommandData launchData, Form form)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Extensibility.MomExtensionsCommon.RunPrivate(Object[] userData)
at Microsoft.EnterpriseManagement.Internal.UI.Authoring.Extensibility.MomExtensionsCommon.Run(Object[] userData)
_________
Anyway to fix this?
Thanks
how can i download the xsnmp MP for SCOM 2007 R2?
HI,
You can download it here : http://xsnmp.codeplex.com/
Best regards
Hi, all.
I just imported xSNMP.Brocade MP to SCOM 2007 R2. Everything works fine, but I have one problem with monitoring objects, named xSNMP.Brocade.Interface.
It looks like a true that the monitor xSNMP.Monitor.InterfaceStatusPoll was inheriet from xSNMP.Interface object, so it use same OIDs like Interface Objects of xSNMP.Interface (.1.3.6.1.2.1.2.2.1.1).
Thereby monitoring Dashboard will always looks like a GREEN zone – that is all intefaces are ok :)), even if FCInterface OIDs – PhyState (.1.3.6.1.4.1.1588.2.1.1.1.6.2.1.3) are not.
Help me please to resolve this problem.
TIA…
hello guys,
I need your help I can’t see the link where I can download this Cisco-MP “”” xSNMP Management Pack Suite Version 1.1.0 (Beta)””.
Thanks in advance
I know this is an older mp, but I’ve been looking for something more detailed for my Cisco devices that will work with SCOM 2012. The comments on codeplex lead me to believe this is not yet compatible. Any plans on an upgrade?
Thanks for your hard work and willingness to share the wonderful products of that work!
Blessings.
Bump! With this MP, is root cause analysis an option with the monitoring of Cisco devices? For example, if a whole site goes down it generates one alert for the site router and supresses all other alerts from devices behind it?