Question Mark Icons

I have some servers that are showing question mark icons for volumes, NICs, etc. Also the main icon itself is the little gray server box that you usually see when snmp is not setup I think.

Anyway, we have snmp working and a RO community set. If I right click on the device I can see all the info under node details, and I can list interfaces and see drives and volumes.

All graphs have been created and data is being logged. These servers are located in China and we are in the US and have a VPN tunnel connection. Responses times vary from 200ms to 450ms, so I don't know if that could be any cause. The servers we have over there are mirror images of ones we have local just with different names IPs etc.

What might be causing this and how do I fix it?

Thanks

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iunderwo

Node details is what SW saw when the box was last rediscovered. The question marks mean that the interface or drive is unknown...essentially that your SNMP polls are failing.

What happens when you try to list resources?

// Ian Underwood - Service Management
// Level 3 Communications

BakerD

List resources shows what it should, interfaces and volumes on servers and interfaces on switches etc.

Interfaces show green and red dots for up down status under list resources too.

If snmp was not getting there, I don't think I would get all that info, especially on the node details.

iunderwo

Interesting behavior.

About the only other thing I can suggest is to get the polls-per-second tuner and make sure it's optimally set for the size of your network.

// Ian Underwood - Service Management
// Level 3 Communications

BakerD

I installed that tool and let it set the polls to what it recommended. Then when it tried to restart the npm service, it pegged my CPU solid. The service was showing it was trying to stop. After 15 minutes I just rebooted the server. Something weird happened with the NIC. It was transmitting but not receiving packets. I finally unplugged the gig cable waited a few minutes and plugged it back in and things started working.

Not sure what happened there, but it seems to be running fine. Also I don't know if it was just ther reboot or the tool with the new polling settings, but my questions marks went away

.

Thanks

Network_Guru

You may want to bump up the polls per second by 20-30% to give yourself some room
for growth. It also speeds up the baselining after a server restart. It usually takes an hour or so to settle down on a large network if you have the polling engine set not to
baseline your network after a restart.

-=Cheers=-
NG

iunderwo

I had to turn off baselining...mostly because it took a lot longer than letting a regular polling interval go on.

Still, it takes about 8 minutes to load in the node list and start working.

Now, on the question mark thing, I noticed similar behavior on my installation after restarting. It usually clears up after I issue a rediscovery request.

// Ian Underwood - Service Management
// Level 3 Communications