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Windows 2003 Servers not allowing SNMP Polls

We have been adding a large number of 2k3 servers and have had trouble polling them via SNMP.  Out of about 300 that we've tried to add, roughly 50 of them went through perfectly by simply adding them to the Security tab of the SNMP Service as an allowed poller.  For the rest of them we had to add our Orion server as a trap destination before it could ever poll it....

We've accepted that as odd and moved on.  However, every morning I come in to find that a dozen or so servers have "dropped off the map" and now can't be polled.  If I restart the SNMP service on the W2k3 server, everything pops up again and starts working.  This appears to be completely random and happens to about a dozen servers a day.

Any thoughts?  We currently have 811 nodes, 2766 interfaces being monitored.

  • FormerMember
    0 FormerMember

    this is a windows problem.

    the problem has to do with the timming between the Group Policy update and the SNMP.exe reading its new values.

    Best info I have on this so far is that the Group policy update clears the vaules and that means the server/ip that you allowed and then sets them all again after an amount of time.  The problem is that after a Group Policy update the SNMP.exe is looking for its new settings and grabs them during the time that they have been cleared and before the new values have actually been written.

    I dont have a fix for you as of yet but as soon as i get one will let you know.

    At least now you know why it is doing it.

    The current short term fix is exactly what you are doing already,  restart the SNMP process.

  • Our office is seeing the same thing.  Have been troubleshooting issue for approx. one month.  Have combed the message boards tirelessly with no resolution.  Would appreciate any fix actions anyone could provide.

  • We also had this problem, but clearing the SNMP settings in windows and configuring the GPO (adding the correct SNMP settings) solved it. Dont know if the two settings keep fighting or what the cause of this is, anyway it works now..

    This is where we do it:

    computer configuration, administrative Templates, Network/SNMP

    Communities

    Permitted Managers

  • We tried that previously on a couple of servers to no avail.  Clear everything SNMP related from the registry, reboot, push group policy, reboot..

    It's odd that everything looks fine, the registry entries are there and you can see everything properly under the SNMP service properties...it just stops working.

  • Have you tried MIB viewer to check if you can read mibs from the server?

  • yes, when the snmp service on the client is in the "dropped out" phase, an snmp walk looks something like this:

    Cannot find module (IP-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (IF-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (TCP-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (UDP-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMPv2-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMPv2-SMI): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (UCD-SNMP-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (UCD-DEMO-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMP-TARGET-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMP-VIEW-BASED-ACM-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMP-COMMUNITY-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (UCD-DLMOD-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMP-FRAMEWORK-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMP-MPD-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMP-USER-BASED-SM-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMP-NOTIFICATION-MIB): At line 0 in (none)
    Cannot find module (SNMPv2-TM): At line 0 in (none)

    Using wireshark, we can see the get request coming from the parent to the client but no reply from the client.  After restarting the snmp service and doing the snmp walk, we can see all the MIBs

  • hm, ok, Im really out of ideas.

    The only thing I would check( but Im sure you have) is that the service

    Windows Firewall/Internet connection Sharing (ICS) is disabled.

    A few times (only on HP blades actually) we have experienced that the firewall turns itself on after reboot. But if we look on the interface cards it claims that its off. So we used a few hours before we found the problem...

  • This is ridiculous, frequently restarting SNMP is only a band-aid, not a solution.  I have looked on different application message boards that use SNMP polls and see this same issue over and over.  Why can't I find much about this subject on M$'s site?