Linux/AIX monitoring agent vs SNMP

Hi Team,

We have few AIX and around 200 linux servers to monitor using SAM.I know agent is available for AIX and linux but will it be good to monitor these servers using SNMP? I am also not seeing any template for SNMP based monitoring.Please let us know where we can get templates for SNMP based monitoring.

Also for file system monitoring if we want to suppress alerting for some less important file systems on selected servers, how can we acheive that? Can we do this by making changes in the alerts or we have to change it in template?

Thanks

Suman

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vinay.by

Hi Suman,

1. To start with you have to add these linux boxes as nodes onto your current environment, its left to you to decide if you want to go with SNMP or Agent based monitoring (don't get confused - templates are the second half of the story, you dont need them to add a node, you can add these devices on NPM you dont need SAM for that). Once you add these nodes via SNMP or Agent based you can monitor Device UP/Down, CPU, Memory, Disk space and interfaces on these Linux Devices.

2. Later on if you need additional monitoring (application monitoring) you could use templates, read more on templates, we will not need additional templates we can create are own templates, in total we have 49 component monitor each component monitor has its own ability (you will understand this once you start working on templates).

Also for file system monitoring if we want to suppress alerting for some less important file systems on selected servers, how can we achieve that? Can we do this by making changes in the alerts or we have to change it in template?

3. Lets take this separately, we can use custom attributes and control this via alerts - you will see a lot of old threads on thwack on how we an achieve this.

smandal027

Hi Vinay,

Thanks for the explanation.

Actually we have to utilize SAM to add these nodes as we don't have enough license for NPM. However as you mentioned if we only monitor CPU/Memory/Disk space then SNMP is enough but if we want to monitor some processes or applications then we need templates, is agent pre-requisite to execute the templates on linux servers?

One more thing, i understood that WMI is the best way to monitor Windows server.In this case, will WMI start monitoring CPU/Memory?disk Space automatically like SNMP or we need to deploy "Windows server services and counters" template for this?

Thanks

Suman

vinay.by

1. Actually we have to utilize SAM to add these nodes as we don't have enough license for NPM. - Ah alright, in that case you will have to get your NPM device license extended if not you cant deploy SAM on the same server, see this is what my understanding is, you add a device and it consumes one license on your NPM store and earlier SAM had component based licensing which is now changed to node based licenses, if its only SAM then yes with SAM4000 you can add upto 4000 devices and deploy 'n' number of component monitors on it.

This is a nice question, its better to check with aLTeReGo.

Hi aLTeReGo - is SolarWinds using the same licensing technique ? if I have a NPM SL2000 and I buy a SAM 4000, does that mean i can add upto 24000 nodes ? Or is it only concerned with the number of nodes on which i can deploy my templates on ?

2. However as you mentioned if we only monitor CPU/Memory/Disk space then SNMP is enough but if we want to monitor some processes or applications then we need templates, is agent pre-requisite to execute the templates on linux servers - Nope, if you decide to use an agent to monitor your linux device then go with agent based monitoring, if you want to go with agentless then go with SNMP, templates/component monitors can use different protocols/techniques to get the statistics (dont get confused - read more on templates and component monitors, once you check the component monitors you will understand how it communicates with the device)

3. One more thing, i understood that WMI is the best way to monitor Windows server.In this case, will WMI start monitoring CPU/Memory?disk Space automatically like SNMP or we need to deploy "Windows server services and counters" template for this? - If you are adding a windows device using WMI it will monitor these base parameters (Device ip/down, cpu, mem, disk, interface) by default if Orion can communicate with the device using WMI, there is no need for you to deploy any template for monitoring your base parameters, anything apart from these as your rightfully said windows performance counters etc this is when you need to create a template and deploy it on that node to fetch the stats.

smandal027

Hi Vinay,

Thanks again!!!

Regarding my 1st question related to licensing, as you said if NPM and SAM

are on same server, and we add one device, by default one license will be

consumed from NPM store.In this case can we say that we will not be able to

discover any device particularly using SAM discovery?

If we have to deploy SAM on a different server, then again we will not get

any consolidated event view.

Thanks

Suman

aLTeReGo

vinay.by wrote:
This is a nice question, its better to check with aLTeReGo .
Hi aLTeReGo - is SolarWinds using the same licensing technique ? if I have a NPM SL2000 and I buy a SAM 4000, does that mean i can add upto 24000 nodes ? Or is it only concerned with the number of nodes on which i can deploy my templates on ?

There's a little problem with your math there, but you've almost got it. If you own a NPM SL2000 and purchase a SAM AL4000, the node license count is additive. Meaning you would be able to monitor a total of 6000 nodes.

vinay.by

Hi aLTeReGo, I have a follow up question on this.

When i deploy SAM on say NPM Server which has a SL2000 and new SAM node based license is AL4000 which sums up to 6000 nodes, does that mean i can discover the interfaces after 2000 devices ? assuming i just have one primary poller and no APE.

aLTeReGo

vinay.by wrote:
Hi aLTeReGo , I have a follow up question on this.
When i deploy SAM on say NPM Server which has a SL2000 and new SAM node based license is AL4000 which sums up to 6000 nodes, does that mean i can discover the interfaces after 2000 devices ? assuming i just have one primary poller and no APE.

I'm afraid not. You are limited to the additive buckets for nodes and volumes, but those entities which do not overlap are licensed independently. So while you can monitor 6000 nodes and volumes, you can only monitor 2000 interfaces and 4000 components across any of those 6000 nodes.

sreenathmp

HI aLTeReGo

Bit confused here, "So while you can monitor 6000 nodes and volumes, you can only monitor 2000 interfaces and 4000 components across any of those 6000 nodes". Did you mean for SAM node based licenses its still have limitations on the components monitored or based on the number of nodes monitored?

aLTeReGo

sreenathmp wrote:
HI aLTeReGo
Bit confused here, "So while you can monitor 6000 nodes and volumes, you can only monitor 2000 interfaces and 4000 components across any of those 6000 nodes". Did you mean for SAM node based licenses its still have limitations on the components monitored or based on the number of nodes monitored?

That's fair. As written I was assuming SAM component based licensing. If you purchase a SAM 4000 node license, and add it to your NPM SL2000, you can monitor a total of 6000 nodes, an unlimited number of volumes, an unlimited number of component monitors across 4000 nodes, and 2000 interfaces.

smandal027

Hi,

Another query related to the initial topic for which we started the

discussion.As we understand that basic os parameters for unix/windows can

be monitored through snmp in SAM.Now if we want to monitor any application

i.e. IIS or SQL server which might need WMI connectivity.In this case will

os parameters get monitored through snmp and application will get monitored

through wmi simultaneously or we have to monitor both os and app using wmi?

Question is same for unix env where ssh will replace wmi.

Thanks

Suman

aLTeReGo

Application and OS monitoriing technologies are largely unrelated. While some applications may have components which can be monitored via WMI, SAM includes ~50 component monitor types which rely upon a variety of different protocols such as HTTP/S, WinRM, RPC, FTP, POP3, IMAP, SOAP, etc. So how you decide to monitor the node should not dictate application monitoring. As a general rule, both the Agent and WMI are always better than SNMP if either of those are an option. SNMP is fairly limited, and best suited for monitoring network devices.

serena

vinay.by wrote:
1. Actually we have to utilize SAM to add these nodes as we don't have enough license for NPM. - Ah alright, in that case you will have to get your NPM device license extended if not you cant deploy SAM on the same server, see this is what my understanding is, you add a device and it consumes one license on your NPM store and earlier SAM had component based licensing which is now changed to node based licenses, if its only SAM then yes with SAM4000 you can add upto 4000 devices and deploy 'n' number of component monitors on it.
This is a nice question, its better to check with aLTeReGo .
Hi aLTeReGo - is SolarWinds using the same licensing technique ? if I have a NPM SL2000 and I buy a SAM 4000, does that mean i can add upto 24000 nodes ? Or is it only concerned with the number of nodes on which i can deploy my templates on ?
2. However as you mentioned if we only monitor CPU/Memory/Disk space then SNMP is enough but if we want to monitor some processes or applications then we need templates, is agent pre-requisite to execute the templates on linux servers - Nope, if you decide to use an agent to monitor your linux device then go with agent based monitoring, if you want to go with agentless then go with SNMP, templates/component monitors can use different protocols/techniques to get the statistics (dont get confused - read more on templates and component monitors, once you check the component monitors you will understand how it communicates with the device)
3. One more thing, i understood that WMI is the best way to monitor Windows server.In this case, will WMI start monitoring CPU/Memory?disk Space automatically like SNMP or we need to deploy "Windows server services and counters" template for this? - If you are adding a windows device using WMI it will monitor these base parameters (Device ip/down, cpu, mem, disk, interface) by default if Orion can communicate with the device using WMI, there is no need for you to deploy any template for monitoring your base parameters, anything apart from these as your rightfully said windows performance counters etc this is when you need to create a template and deploy it on that node to fetch the stats.

Node counts are additive between NPM & SAM, so in your example you would be able to add 2000+4000=6000 nodes.