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Branch VPN Monitoring

Hi All,

Is there a way in NPM for me to be able to monitor if LAN-to-LAN VPN's are up between all my branch offices?

To explain more, I monitor all the VPN's from my branch office, where the SolarWinds server is, to our CoLo'd server and all the other four branch offices from here but what I also want to do is monitor the VPN connections from the CoLo to the other branch offices and the direct VPN's between the other branch offices themselves.

The CoLo and three main branch offices use Cisco Routers and the other two smaller offices are on DrayTek Routers.

I'd rather not pay for additional NPM servers at the other locations.

You'll probably come back mentioning MIB's and OIDs and such so please bear in mind I'm a total nooby at this, only managing to create a custom gauge showing how many GlobalActiveTunnels are on each Cisco router but this doesn't show me any difference as to whether these are LAN-to-LAN or individual clients and whether it is a LAN-to-LAN dropping, which is what I'm trying to monitor.

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Accepted answers

rharland2012

Understood. Here's the part where I regrettably must mention MIBs and OIDs .

Seriously, though - you've got some options for your first step. You can do a full SNMPwalk of (for example) one of the Cisco routers in the other offices, say office 3. Somewhere in the long list of results, there are likely going to be OIDs referring directly to the tunnels to each of the other offices. It's hard to say what exactly those OIDs might be, but it's a good bet they're not too far off from the GlobalActiveTunnels subtree. Those OIDs will correspond to each of the tunnels, and will advise on up/down and other information about them. Once discovered, you can build a UnDP (universal device poller) to capture this customized information and display it in NPM. I'm assuming you've done this to get the global tunnels counter, but in case you haven't:

Running SNMPWalk

How to create an UnDP for your devices using Solarwinds Orion.pdf

This is the method I would use to identify, collect, and display the information you're trying to get.

Hope this helps.

All comments

cjfranca

I do not quite understand what you want.
But you will receive other devices to monitor and will not get an add poller.
Checks what is more important to monitor the network and frees conditions to monitor other devices. Look if you can explain more accurate I can help you exactly what you

rharland2012

You are able to poll the Cisco and Draytek routers via SNMP, right?

Do you poll these devices via the VPN tunnels you reference?

If so - and say one of the VPNs from the colo Cisco and one of the Drayteks went down - wouldn't your polling to the Draytek fail?

I could be oversimplifying this, but that's a pretty fair measure of whether or not the VPN tunnel is up.

itmancal

Hope this makes it a little clearer.

Office 1 = CoLo
Office 2 = South Office (My office & home of Orion NPM Server)
Office 3 = SouthWest Office
Office 4 = Mid Office
Office 5 = NW Office
Office 6 - NE Office

I can see all the offices through my VPN connections to each, so from office 2 to office 1,3,4,5 & 6.
What I'm trying to monitor is whether the VPN's are up between all the other branch offices that connect to all the other offices except mine.
So if I'm a user in office 3, I have VPN's to all the other offices, 1,2,4,5 & 6.
Monitoring from Orion NPM in the office 2 can't see if the VPN link from Office 3 to the offices 1,4,5 & 6 are up, just the vpn from office 2 to 3.

rharland2012

Ah, understood.

So in this case, you're not able to get the VPN status information for all tunnels from router 3 (for example) by polling via SNMP?

itmancal

That's the info I'm trying to find out, is there a way to poll the tunnels on the routers in the other offices to see if they're up.

I can't see anything when doing a resource check except for ports etc.

rharland2012

Understood. Here's the part where I regrettably must mention MIBs and OIDs .

Running SNMPWalk

How to create an UnDP for your devices using Solarwinds Orion.pdf

This is the method I would use to identify, collect, and display the information you're trying to get.

Hope this helps.

itmancal

rharland2012

Thanks for the update, I had a feeling this was going to be the answer. I guess I managed it once so I suppose I can do it again. Thanks for your links, they look useful. Better get searching for me MIBs and OIDs.

rharland2012

If these Cisco routers are under support, don't be afraid to reach out to Cisco TAC for help identifying the OIDs in question. They can help you isolate the correct information quickly.