SAM 6.3 GA Linux Agent - Net-SNMP Required?

Looking at the New Feature Summary SAM - SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. Help and Support and then the subsequent SolarWinds Orion 2016.2 feature: Orion Agent for Linux - SolarWinds Worldwide, LLC. Help and Support links, I came across this little tidbit:

Include SNMP credentials - Enables the agent to locally collect SNMP data on a Linux-based system. SNMP credentials are used in the SAM SNMP monitor, in Asset Inventory reports, and to monitor Hardware Health.

Is it safe to say that net-SNMP is NOT a requirement for the standard statistical polling (CPU, Memory, Interface Stats, Volume Stats) that Orion historically achieves remotely?
1. If net-SNMP is not required, what is the method being used to collect these statistics?
Additionally, what are the capabilities of the agent with respect to interface statistics if you have SAM-only versus SAM with NPM?

Thanks! Loving the new release

-ZackM

Loop1 Systems: SolarWinds Training and Professional Services

LinkedIN: Loop1 Systems
Facebook: Loop1 Systems
Loop1 Twitter: @Loop1Systems
ZackM Twitter: @ZackM

Find more posts tagged with

linux agent

Loop1

sam 6.3

mvp

Accepted answers

All comments

tomasv

If net-SNMP is not required, what is the method being used to collect these statistics?

To get the pieces of information agent runs traditional utilities or virtual directories like

/proc/stat
/proc/meminfo
df
ip addr show

jbiggley

The question has to be asked then (before adatole does) -- has the calculation for Linux memory utilization changed at all? With the capacity to get more "correct" memory stats via free, top, /proc/meminfo, etc. it would seem that the time was ripe to change the default memory widget.

I ask only because I am starting to consider the number of custom pollers I have deployed and would love to trim those back in some way.

adatole

I would actually say that the way around this is to use the web-based "Manage pollers" option in NPM 11+ and replace the existing values with your choice. That way you are (more or less) replacing like-for-like in terms of polling, and it's handled differently by the engine. You also avoid double-collecting for CPU, RAM, etc in those situations.

jbiggley

I thought about that but someone (I won't mention any names Leon) used transforms like they were going out of style. I don't think Manage Pollers was up to the task -- but I'll double-check.

aLTeReGo

jbiggley, the Linux Agent monitoring of memory utilization is indeed far more accurate than NET-SNMP.

jbiggley

Now to weigh the benefit of re-working all of our UnDPs and associated alerts with deploying Linux agents.

Man, progress is hard work