SNMP trap question

shanepj

So I am getting a high volume of traps with a failure on them. Trap type = SNMPv2-MIB:authenticationFailure  By high I mean about 1 every 3-4 seconds from almost 1000 server devices.  I have found the issue and put in the request to have the settings changed on all of our servers, but that change might take another 2-4 weeks to be implemented.  So in the meantime it is almost impossible to search for traps due to timeouts and general slowness.  I am thinking that if I clear these traps out of the table daily it might run better.  So if I simply run a

delete * from traps

where [TrapType] = 'SNMPv2-MIB:authenticationFailure'

 can I do this while the system is up and running without hurting anything?  I am looking to clear all these trap types out of the database hoping to increase response time.  This is our primary trap receiver and it feeds our event console and remedy ticket system.  to shut it down even for a quick thing like this is not really something I can do without lots and lots of red tape.  Any thought on just clearing these trap types out while the system is running?

 

sedmo

I think you could safely do this while the system is running but there are a couple of things you should probably do in addition to the delete query.

1. make sure you have a backup of your database.

2. create a trap filter that discards incoming authenticationFailure traps.  If the traps are coming in at a fast enough rate then your delete query make take a very long time or basically never finish.  You could also leave this filter in place until your servers are fixed in order to keep these traps from filling up your Traps table.

3. run the delete query

delete from Traps
where TrapType = 'SNMPv2-MIB:authenticationFailure'

4. there is a second table named TrapVarBinds that contains records associated with each trap record in the Traps table.  You will also need to run a delete query on the TrapVarBinds table to delete these records.

delete from TrapVarBinds
WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT TrapID FROM Traps WHERE TrapVarBinds.TrapID=Traps.TrapID)