How to Override Group Based Monitoring Settings for Specific Devices

By default, all the monitoring settings for each device are defined in the Monitoring Profile that is assigned to

Monitoring Group where this specific device is a member of.

Starting from 1.67.1 release Nectus adds ability to override group-based monitoring settings for each device.

Step1: Login to the Nectus Portal and go to the specific device on which you need to perform the monitoring settings override.

Right click on the device and select Properties.

Step 2: Select Metrics Tab in the properties modal and apply all the required overrides to the required metrics.

Check button “Local Override” must be selected for all the metrics that must have priority (override) over Group based monitoring settings.

Network device monitoring in Nectus  is controlled by device monitoring groups and associated monitoring profiles.

There are two default monitoring groups: “Default Monitoring Group” and “No Monitoring Group”

By default all devices are automatically assigned to Default Monitoring Group where all basic monitoring metric are enabled.

“No Monitoring Group” is used as a parking place for devices that do not required monitoring.

In some cases additional  monitoring groups may be required and this article explains the steps required to create  additional monitoring groups.

Step 1: Login to the Nectus Portal and go to Monitoring -> Network Monitoring Settings -> SNMP Devices Monitoring Settings.

Step 2: Monitoring Profile Creation – Go to the SNMP Device Monitoring Profile by clicking the Add Profile button. Name the profile, enable the relevant options, and click the OK button.

Now, we can see that the newly created profile is shown in the table.

Step 3: Monitoring Group Creation – Next, let’s go to the SNMP Device Monitoring Groups tab and create a new device monitoring group.

Step 4: Assigning Devices to Monitoring Group – Click on the device group name to add the appropriate device information to the group and lastly click on Save and Ok buttons.

Step 5: Assigning Monitoring Profile to Monitoring Group – Enable the monitoring and select the previously created monitoring profile from the dropdown.

Step 6: Defining Alert Recipients for Monitoring Group – Now, let’s configure recipients for alerting by clicking the email button. It allows us to add SMS and email recipients to a list.

Done.

How to Monitor Number of Active UDP Sessions on PaloAlto Firewalls

Quick Start

Step 1: Login to Nectus and go to Monitoring -> Network Monitoring Settings -> Custom SNMP Trackers.

Step 2: Click on the Create button to create a new SNMP Custom Tracker that will be collecting number of active UDP sessions every 5min.

Palo Alto SNMP OID that returns number of active UDP sessions: 1.3.6.1.4.1.25461.2.1.2.3.5.0

Step 3: Enable the tracker, provide the tracker name, SNMP OID, unit name and data type.

Alerting option can be enable with predefined threshold value.

Step 4: If not created in advance, create the SNMP Device View by clicking the + (plus) button.

Provide the view name and select the Palo Alto Firewalls from available device list for monitoring.

Click “Ok” to finish tracker creation.

Step 5: For reporting, Go to the Reports -> “Top” reports -> Top Custom SNMP Trackers

Step 6: Select the appropriate report and tracker name to get the max. and min. values.

Click on the Graph button to get the tracker trend in visual form.

Done.

How to Monitor Number of Palo Alto VPN (Global Protect) Users

Step 1: Login to Nectus and go to Monitoring -> Network Monitoring Settings -> Custom SNMP Trackers.

Step 2: Click on the Create button to create a new SNMP Custom Tracker that will be collecting number of connected VPN users every 5min.

Palo Alto SNMP OID that returns number of connected users: 1.3.6.1.4.1.25461.2.1.2.5.1.3.0

Step 3: Enable the tracker, provide the tracker name, SNMP OID, unit name and data type.

Alerting option can be enabled with predefined threshold values.

Step 4: If not created in advance, create the SNMP Device View by clicking the + (plus) button.

Provide the view name and select the Palo Alto Firewalls from available device list for monitoring.

Click “Ok” to finish tracker creation.

Step 5: For reporting, Go to the Reports -> “Top” reports -> Top Custom SNMP Trackers

Step 6: Select the appropriate report and tracker name to get the max. and min. values.

Click on the Graph button to get the tracker trend in visual form.

Done.

Configuring SNMP OID for Memory Utilization Monitoring

1. In this article we look at how to configure the SNMP OID for memory utilization monitoring of specific device. If you do not know the OID for a device, contact the device manufacturer and request the OID for the function required.

Procedure

Step 1. Right-click on the device that required RAM utilization monitoring and select View Device Info.

Step 2. The View Device Info window opens. Click on SNMP OID.

Step 3. The SNMP OID window opens. Examine the entries for “platform specific oid memory utilization.” In this case two OID entries have been made. Depending on the manufacturer, one or two entries will be entered.

Step 4. If there are no entries, then SNMP OID need to be entered to enable the memory utilization monitoring.

Step 5. To enter platform specific OID for memory utilization, click on the text.

Step 6. The SNMP OID (memory utilization) window appears.

The manufacturer will tell you how the device reports memory utilization. If the device reports Memory Utilization Percent directly, the OID is entered in that box and provisioning is done. If the device reports separate values for total, free or used, then the OID information for each count need to be entered. Nectus will perform the calculation to arrive at Memory Utilization.

For example, when the device reports Memory Utilization Percent directly, the OID is entered in the first box and provisioning is complete.

In this case, the device reports Memory Used and Memory Free, so the OID for Memory Used is entered in the Memory Used space and the OID for Memory Free is entered in the Memory Free space. Nectus will compute utilization as Memory Used / (Memory Used + Memory Free) * 100.

In this case, the device reports Memory Free and Memory Total, so the OID for Memory Free is entered in the Memory Free space, and the OID for Memory Total is entered in the Memory Total space. Nectus will compute utilization as Memory Free / Memory Total * 100.

Step 7. Click on the OK button. Nectus will provision the OID information, unless an error is discovered.

In this case Nectus is reporting that Used and Free Memory OIDs are required.

We re-enter the OID information as Memory Used and Memory Free, and click OK.

Step 8. The OID assignments are accepted and displayed on the View Device window.

Testing

1. Testing: Testing the assignments can be done by examining the utilization display or retrieving the OID contents.

Step 1. Click View Device → General to see the results of configuration.

RAM percent utilization is working.

Step 2. Testing: Click on the dial to see a graph of the measurement over time.

Step 3. Testing: To retrieve current value of OID select SNMP OID tab and click on “TEST” for OID of interest.

Step 4. Change SNMP Walk to GET.

Step 5. Click Start.

Step 6. Current value of the OID will be displayed.

Monitoring BGP Sessions with Nectus

Nectus 1.2.53 introduces ability to automatically discover and monitor iBGP and eBGP sessions across all router types and manufacturers.

Nectus scheduled network discovery automatically finds all the BGP sessions via SNMP polls and adds it to Nectus database where user can group them by type and enable active monitoring and alerting.

BGP Session Discovery

As part of regular scheduled network discovery Nectus detects all existing BGP Sessions and adds it to one of the existing BGP group which has “Default” flag set to ON.

You can see all the BGP sessions that were discovered in Inventory -> BGP Sessions or in left side panel called “BGP Sessions”

If you right-click on BGP Session and select “Properties”

.. you can assign a human friendly name or change a group membership for any of the BGP sessions.

You can create multiple BGP session groups and assign discovered BGP sessions to different groups according to its type or functional purpose.

To create a new Group, right-click on “BGP Sessions” line and select “Add New Group” on context menu.

Configure New Group name, set “Enable monitoring” to ON if you want all BGP Sessions in this group to be monitored for UP/DOWN Status.

If you set “Default” value to ON, this group will become a group where all newly discovered BGP sessions be added automatically. Only one group can have “Default” value set to ON

You can also assign BGP Session to a Group by right-clicking on BGP session and selecting “Move BGP Session to..” option

By clicking “View Session Info” on BGP Session context menu you can view detailed information about BGP Session

After you finished creating BGP session groups, assigning BGP sessions to corresponding groups and enabling BGP session groups for Monitoring the final step is to enable BGP Sessions monitoring in corresponding SNMP Device Monitoring Profiles that are applied to the routers that terminate all the BGP sessions.

Find required SNMP Monitoring Profile and enable “BGP Session Status” Monitoring Option

Now are you all set to start monitoring your BGP sessions line a pro.

Suppression of Frequent Identical Alerts In Nectus

Often when a network device or interface changes its state between Up and Down multiple times in a short time interval, numerous identical alerts will be sent to all the configured alert recipients.

Nectus offers the ability to suppress frequent identical alerts to reduce informational noise level by specifying a suppression timer for up to three hours.

Nectus calculates a CRC hash value from each of the email alert bodies and if hash values of two alerts are matching they are considered to be identical and can be suppressed.

Nectus excludes event timer values and specific metric values from hash calculation logic. You can configure the suppression timer from 0 to 180 minutes where 0 means no suppression.

To configure the suppression timer, go to    Monitoring -> Global Monitoring Settings

Under Monitoring Settings, select the Alerts tab.

To enable suppression specify a time interval from 1 to 180 minutes.

At the end of the time interval, alert logic will resume as normal.

Setting timer to 0 will disable the suppression.