This discussion has been locked. The information referenced herein may be inaccurate due to age, software updates, or external references.

You can no longer post new replies to this discussion. If you have a similar question you can start a new discussion in this forum.

WiFi Monitoring & Reporting

stuartd over 5 years ago

Because of the type of business we are we need to not only monitor devices but also produce regular reports. Beyond that we also need to store basic information (let's clal it compliance) such as device location, address, type, serial numbers, etc).

However, and this may just be us misisng the obvious, with thin AP's (i.e. those managed via a WLC) we can't pull (or se ehow to) information relating to up / down, overall availability, etc of each device. As a consequence we have taken to creating an additional ICMP only node for each AP. This allows us to see the up/down, etc aspects as well as store relevant info via custom properties...but it does cause the additional work effort of creating each AP and populating the fields.... as well as correcting the IP when its DHCP allocation changes. Currently we only monitor and alert on the ICMP only node for each AP and not the WLC based one.

So, are we missing the obvious here?

Can Solarwinds interrogate the WLC for availability reports?

Can it 'pull' the serial number for each AP?

Is there a better option or what methods do you take to this?

Top Replies

0 deverts over 5 years ago

stuartd,
You are correct on each "obvious" fact. The only additional steps you could take would be to assign a static IP to the APs and enable SNMP. That would solve for your DHCP issue, but cause another admin task during implementation. And SNMP would allow you to enable SNMP polling and pull the serial number among other data points.
If you are using Cisco, there are also CLI options you can evaluate to extract the details. ("show ap inventory")
These aren't "clean options" native to Orion, but they are options to assist.
D
Cancel
Vote Up +1 Vote Down

Cancel
0 deverts over 5 years ago

Incidentally, there are several feature requests out there you should search for and vote on, like this one:
Cancel
Vote Up +1 Vote Down

Cancel
0 stuartd over 5 years ago in reply to deverts

Thank you and I appreciate the reply. One of the "hoped for" drivers from using Solarwinds was the removal of reliance on multiple spreadsheets.... in some areas it has defibnitely improved our management and workflow but in other areas complicated it. This is one such
As to making changes to use static IPs, etc then I'm just a lowly tech that doesn't get listened to and have been banging that drum for >15yrs...
I do vote on any feature request I see that I think are good ideas and have done so - the on you referenced I hadn't see / found before but now voted for. I do wonder how useful such things are though as I've seen requests dating back 5+yrs that have 100's of votes yet still not implemented..
Cancel
Vote Up 0 Vote Down

Cancel