Adding Loop-back IP Addresses to Solarwinds NPM

Hi There,

Am new to Solarwinds , but being playing around with the Existing lab that i have , however, i'd like to know the options of monitoring Cisco devices via Loopback IP Addresses on NPM, The loopback are currently being hosted by an ISP and i have the list of Loopbacks , please i'd like to know the requirements and basic setup.

Regards

Adeola

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Accepted answers

kremerkm

Correct. Has to get some type of entry point for the NPM server to be able to get to them to get data from the loopback address on each device. We have sourced Netflow from that interface as well if you are running Netflow Traffic Analyzer.

Works well!

Just recommend assign a /16 block or something that not being used in your environment for each loopback interface.

All comments

kremerkm

We do a lot of our monitoring via Loopback interfaces on Cisco devices and have no issues with it. We just make sure the devices are reachable on that address to out NPM system.

adeyeyea

Thank you Kremerkm and i really appreciate your swift response

This is the situation.

I want to be able to monitor my client's cisco devices from my office using loopback IP Addresses and i do not want to connect to the client's Network via vpn, so i decided to go via my client's ISP. so my question is , do i need to connect to the ISP Via VPN to be able to reach the loop back IP Addresses on the Devices or is there a specific configurations to be done on my NPM Servers to be able to reach the Loop back IP Addresses?

Best

adsmith79

Hi adeyeyea,

I would highly doubt this would be possible... It's not really a good idea to make the snmp accessable via a loopback address that is exposed to the internet. I would expect some VPN etc should be necessary to get onto those devices... If it's not I would be having a serious look at the security of a network.

Cheers

kremerkm

Agreed. You would need to do a management VPN tunnel to be able to poll loopback IP addresses. We have done that and that configuration works fine. Just have to make the loopback accessible via routing to get it sent to peer at the host source where NPM is running at.

adeyeyea

Which in essence , i would need a VPN Tunnelling from NPM Server via the ISP to be able to pull and reach the loopback IP Addresses.

kremerkm

You would need to have a entry point into the location where to terminate the VPNs for management. From there at your location, your NPM server will need to be accessible to those devices via that entry point at your location.

adeyeyea

Awesome...so therefore , I would request that the ISP gives me a VPN access to the WAN network or perhaps MPLS network where the Devices are connected to

jspeer

I did this quite extensively at my last job. We were however monitoring through the loopback interface on routers at remote locations connected over our own MPLS network provided by Verizon.

kremerkm

Works well!

Just recommend assign a /16 block or something that not being used in your environment for each loopback interface.