Monitoring interfaces without alerts

I need to monitor the usage of about 6000 switchports (University Dorm Rooms) for about a month. (The IT department needs to provide a summary of the usage of wired ports in the dorms.) I have no problem adding these to NPM but I don't want to be alerted on the up/down status of these interfaces. I just want Orion to monitor them for a month so I can run a report on the number of ports that were actually in use during the month. I know if I add these ports to Orion there will be quite a few alerts generated (in "active alerts," "nodes with problems," "events," etc.). I don't want any alerts at all. Is there an easy way to accomplish what I'm trying to do? Thanks in advance for any responses.

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zkahl

One idea that jumps out with me is putting a custom property on those interfaces. Then add a setting on advanced alerts under 'Alert Suppression', select the custom property for these interfaces. This is assuming you are using advanced alerts and not basic alerts.

Zak

rjnicholson

If you are using basic monitoring now then just don't select the interfaces.

If you are using advanced alerting then a custom property called DORMS on the interfaces would work. Make it a true/false value and populate the proper interfaces. If you can find a way to select all the interfaces at once and populate the True check mark good. If not then use the Manage Nodes from the Web Console. You can sort by switches and do a select all on the interface you need to mark with the True/False value at once, and click Edit Properties and under the custom property of DORMS add a True/1/or Yes to it. Click Submit.

Once completed go into your Advanced alert for interfaces and add a simple condition to your alert. You will find the value of DORMS under Nodes>Custom Properties.

DORMS is equal to False

Add that and you will only alert on any interface not marked with a value of True.

Be careful to not over load your polling engine. Adding this many interfaces will quickly eat up resources on a single polling engine. You might also adjust the ICMP polling settings on those interfaces to poll them slowly with ICMP to reduce some load since you just want metrics and aren't caring about Up/Down that ICMP is polling.

netlogix

you could mark those interfaces as unplugable. That might take care of your alerting part if the alert is for status = Down because status will change to unplugged instead of down.

rjnicholson

I always forget about the unplugged setting!!

wfleitz

Thanks for the informative replies. I've gone ahead and created a Custom property "dorms." If I understand correctly, I will apply that property to the dorm room interfaces and then mark those as unplugged. I agree with not wanting to add so many interfaces but hopefully this will only be for about a month. I will adjust the polling settings on those interfaces so that it creates less load on the engine. I'll let you know how it works out. Thanks again!

rjnicholson

You don't have to do both if you set them as unplugged. They won't alert up/down no matter what once you set them that way, but you may want to keep the custom property as it will give you a way to filter the reports and metrics you pull. This way your reporting you present will only be for the requested Dorm User traffic.

wfleitz

Ah, that makes sense. Good point about using the custom property to filter. Thanks again!