Universal Device Poller, SNMP tables, and labels

Question

Hi All,

I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around using the Universal Device Poller and extracting some information from an IBM DataPower XI50 appliance.  I'm performing a snmpwalk on the appliance for a particular OID which returns an entry containing the name, temperature, thresholds, and status of multiple sensors (CPU, memory, etc).  I've attached an snmpwalk with and without MIB translations for this particular issue.

When creating the custom poller, I can get it to successfully test the OID and return the values for the host I'm using to test against.  The problem comes when it wants to select the label.  If I tell it to "Use labels from a table column", and select the same device I successfully tested on the previous screen, I get a little error message "This does not appear to be a valid column OID. Stopping test", at which point it does not let me proceed.  I think the problem is how the OID is constructed in the returned table.  For example, the information for "Temperature CPU1" has it's name in 1.3.6.1.4.1.14685.3.1.141.1.1.84.101.109.112.101.114.97.116.117.114.101.32.67.80.85.49.  Everything after 1.3.6.1.4.1.14685.3.1.141.1.1 is the decimal code for the letters in the name.  84=T, 101=e, 109=m, etc.  I think this is causing the Universal Device Poller application to get confused over what to do because it should really be stopping at 1.3.6.1.4.1.14685.3.1.141.1.1, which in the MIB defines dpStatusTemperatureSensorsName.

I've tried telling it to go for the temperature values, but then end up with the same issue, I have no way to define what the values are tied to by name (ie, CPU or memory temperatures) because it throws the same error message.

Anybody got any ideas on how to get around this?

Edit: In addition to pulling the values out, how do you get it to react to a different field for the status? For example, the CPU1 temperature is at "31C", the dpStatusTemperatureSensorsReadingStatus is ok(4).  If it exceeds a certain value, the dpStatusTemperatureSensorsReadingStatus changes, so we'd want that item to be marked as in a different status.

Attachments are:

- walk_temps.txt is an snmpwalk without importing the MIBs.

- walk_temps_mibs.txt is an snmpwalk with MIBs imported.

- drConfigMIB.txt is the root MIB for the DataPower appliance.

- drStatusMIB.txt is the MIB for appliance status.

attachments.zip

zbynek.botlo · Answer

It looks like you have old version of the MIB database. Can you upgrade to the latest one? Creating UnDPs will be much more easier then because the OIDs you want to poll are already included there. This means you can browse the MIB tree and simply select the OID you need. All the data will be predefined and it'll probably resolve your label issue too.

See this blog post for more info:

Orion MIB Database – What Is It Good For?

Latest version of the MIB database with instructions how to upgrade it should be available at the SolarWinds Customer Portal.

jangliss · Answer

zbynek.botlo wrote:

I was able to create the poller for your table with the correct label and everything seems to work just fine with the provided snmp walk.

I'd love to know how you did this.  This UnDP export works just fine.  So I figured I'd look at the values in the UnDP interface and see if I could figure out exactly what you did.  Here are my steps:

* New Universal Device Poller
* Paste the OID in the "OID" box.  I noticed you pointed specifically at the Value field in the table, rather than the table itself, so I did the same, but with a voltage table.
* Filled in name/description
* Under the "Show Advanced Options", I set format to None, MIB value type to raw, and get type to Get Table.
* Assigned it to a group
* Clicked Next and tested it against a device, saw values returned
* Clicked Next and on the Label section, told it to "Use label from a table column", selected one of our DataPower appliances, and clicked Test
* Got the same error "This does not appear to be a valid column OID. Stopping test".

Some observations from yours compared to mine.  You somehow used the MIB value string somehow.  Your imported value has a "MIB Name" defined, I cannot seem to find anywhere that is setup.  Did you do anything special with the MIB files I included to make this happen?  I cannot seem to figure out how you got the OID for the name column included as yours shows "Same Table".

I do understand I'm using a slightly older NPM (10.1.3) with the UnDP application showing a version of 10.1.13.12 on the executable.

At this point I'm relatively sure I'm missing something obvious, but I have no idea what it is.

Thanks again for getting the first one going.

zbynek.botlo · Answer

Hi Jonathan,

I see no reason why the Universal Device Poller shouldn't work in your case. The oid suffix is just an index, in this particular table represented as the encoded name of the sensor. This is not unusual situation and UnDP application can handle it easily. I was able to create the poller for your table with the correct label and everything seems to work just fine with the provided snmp walk. I exported this UnDP and attached it here so you can import it to your environment and check whether you created it in the same way. If so we'll look for the problem elsewhere.

Regarding your second question, NPM is currently not supporting node status change based on the Universal Device Poller results and you should create a feature request for this.

Hope this helps,

Zbynek Botlo

dpStatusTemperatureSensorsValueSW.UnDP