Monitoring VLANs

pshepherd28

How would I monitor VLAN status (up/down) within NPM or NTA?

cnorborg

I'd do it with NPM.

Remember that there can be two components to a VLAN depending on what kind of equipment your on.

There is a Layer-2 side, which I like to think of as the actual VLAN itself.  You will typically find this on switches and they will show up as something like "Vlan1 - Vl1", or on a L3 switch it might show up as "unrouted VLAN 1 - VLAN-1".  This will show you whether or not the Layer-2 side of the VLAN is up on the switch.  You typically won't find this on a router unless there is a built in switch or something.   If you were in a switch you would configure it by typing in "Vlan X" where X is the Vlan number. 

In list resources there is also the plain "Vlan" checkbox which tells NPM whether or not to learn what VLANs exist on the box.   I don't believe this box has anything to do with monitoring the state of the VLANs.

Then there is the Layer-3 side, which can be found on both routers and switches, if the switch has routing capabilities.    On a L3 switch it will show up as "VlanX - <interface description>".  On an actual router you would see the interface associated with the VLAN that it is routing for.  Quite typically a sub-interface on an Ethernet interface.

I usually monitor the L3 interfaces for my VLANs and not the L2, it really depends on your preference though.

HTH!