NPM Beginner question(s)

After having used NPM in my former job, i´ve moved on to a new position and would like to convince my current employer to implement NPM.

However since i´ve only used NPM as an end-user, my knowledge on the inner workings of NPM is *quite* limited.

I understand that SNMP and ICMP are primarily used, but my question is regarding the state of how the information is gathered.

A) Is it possible to monitor our nodes and network in general in a "read-only mode" ? By this I mean that no configuration would be touched by NPM and if I decided to remove NPM nothing would have to be "restored".

Would the above setup have any impact on the performance of the nodes and network?

C) Is there anything that I should be aware of before trying NPM on a "live" network?

Basically I want to make a demo for my employer to showcase NPM - but the only way I will get permission to do so, is if I can guarantee that it wouldnt have any impact on our configuration/network.

Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks in advance

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Accepted answers

tonyled

a. yes, npm can be setup exclusively with read-only snmp credentials

b. extremely minimal if any

c. not really, its a pretty simple setup

All comments

tonyled

a. yes, npm can be setup exclusively with read-only snmp credentials

b. extremely minimal if any

c. not really, its a pretty simple setup

NmE

Thanks for the quick reply

Regarding read-only snmp credentials, is there any specific setting I should be aware of when running a network discovery ?

Gustelj

Hi,

A) Just configure only read only SNMP community strings on your devices.

SNMP process has typically low priority, therefore it should not impair main functionality. Just don't poll too often and you are safe. In my experience (my environment) less than 1 % of network traffic is generated by SNMP (with NPM on default settings).

C) I've been using NPM for more than five years now and I often use more than one instance of NPM (production and testing), all on production network, but separate servers. There was never a single problem in my production network due to the NPM. Maybe for a beginning enable monitoring only on a few typical devices in your network.

NTA, IP SLA and NCM would need some additional considerations.

tonyled

are you the one configuring the boxes you will be monitoring?

if not, then you must supply the read only credentials to the person(s) responsible for config management. i would highly advise against using the default which most of the time is "public" and sometimes on by default. once the device is setup with your read only snmp string then its simply a matter of adding the devices to npm