Discover fails to GET CatOS port name

I find that the disocver process fails or succeeds on various Cisco devices. Some of our devices, such as 6509 running CatOS's, appear to have picked up the SET PORT NAME (Cat) at one time in the past, but no longer do this, inserting a generic "Port 6/1 · 10/100 utp ethernet (cat 3/5)" name, instead of picking up the actual PORT NAME. We have 225 switches with 14,000 ports, so you can see where double-entering every named port is a futile exercise.

Is there some rhyme or reason to this ability? If I had to guess I would say that most to all of the failures occur on CatOS on both 4000 and 6500 platforms.

We are moving from NPM 7.8 to 8.5 this week. I'm wondering if this has been improved?

If not, I wonder if it even makes the bug list?

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Accepted answers

DavidHart

I've attached the script that I use to update the port names in Orion for our COS switches. As usual, USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!

Make sure that you understand what it does before running it!!! You'll have to edit the script to add your Orion server name, SQL server name, etc. before you run it.

The script is written for a single Orion server and has not been tested in an environment that has multiple servers running Orion. If you have multiple servers running Orion, you may have to modify the script to get it to work in your environment. The script is designed to query SNMP on your switches using SNMP version 1 or 2c. If you want to use version 3, you will have to modify the script.

With that out of the way, the script:

Stops the NetPerfMon service. This is necessary to update the database.
Queries the Nodes and Interfaces Tables for any CatOS switches and associated Interfaces, grabbing the community string, SNMP version, DNS name, etc.
Uses Net-SNMP SNMPGET program to retreive the port description (you will need to download and install NET-SNMP) then connects to the database and updates the port name.
Restarts the NetPerfMon service.

David

Orion_COSPortUpdate1.zip

All comments

DavidHart

I've put in a request for this with Solarwinds support.

In the mean time, I've created a VBScript that Stops the NetfPerMonService, queries SQL for devices running "Cisco Catalyst Operating System" and their associated interfaces that are currently being monitored, uses the mod/port information to poll the Cisco OID using NET-SNMP, and then updates the SQL database and restarts the NetfPerMonService. I plan to run it twice a week. We only monitor the uplinks between our switches and those don't change often.

Let me know if you want a copy. I'll either put it on a web site or post it here (depending on the forum rules).

David

RoyalEF

David that's a brilliant solution. I'd love to get a copy. Thank You very much.

I checked the standard mib and saw that Cisco doesn't populate the interfaces.descr properly. Actually whoever made the 4000 & 6000 lines (cause these aren't actual Cisco creations, just acquisitions) didn't do it. And Cisco hasn't bothered to change that.I hadn't had time to scan through the Cisco OID and see if they populated them in a proprietary field.

I would recommend that you monitor your server farm ports. Depending upon how your shop runs, you'd be shocked how many devastating errors I've caught monitoring all server ports. Also you get an idea what people are doing, vs. what they say they are doing. Like backing up servers across firewalls in the middle of the production day and bringing internet access to a crawl. Sometimes they won't admit they are doing things like this because they haven't admitted other problems, like backups take 72 hours to run on one file server cause they didn't hard code (yet, again) the NIC to 100 FULL (which is the standard for sub-Gig servers). Or when the db guys insisted on a separate gib network for the HUGE volume of db synchs which proved to have 5 minutes peaks occasionally at 150kb.

That's the biggest reason why I need port descriptions, due to the 300-400 server ports we have on 6500s and 4000's.

Network_Guru

Nice work David.
I've been asking for CatOS portname support for many years now:

Maybe in Version 9?

DavidHart

I've attached the script that I use to update the port names in Orion for our COS switches. As usual, USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!!!!!!

Make sure that you understand what it does before running it!!! You'll have to edit the script to add your Orion server name, SQL server name, etc. before you run it.

With that out of the way, the script:

Stops the NetPerfMon service. This is necessary to update the database.
Queries the Nodes and Interfaces Tables for any CatOS switches and associated Interfaces, grabbing the community string, SNMP version, DNS name, etc.
Uses Net-SNMP SNMPGET program to retreive the port description (you will need to download and install NET-SNMP) then connects to the database and updates the port name.
Restarts the NetPerfMon service.

David

Orion_COSPortUpdate1.zip