How to monitor the status of Windows Processes

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How to monitor the status of Windows Processes.

Quick Start Guide

Step 1: Login to the Nectus portal, Add the WMI Account for accessing the Windows Machine. Go to Settings -> General Settings -> WMI Integration.

Click on the Add button in the WMI Integration Modal.

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Step 2: Provide Windows Domain/Server information with user credentials and click on the Test button.

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Step 2a: With the valid credentials and connectivity, we should get the success message as displayed in the test modal.

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Step 3: Now, let’s create a WMI group and add the Windows Server into that group.

Go to WMI Servers and right click to Add a Group.

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Step 4: Give a valid name, enable the monitoring to select the appropriate Monitoring and ICMP profiles.

Step 4a: We can also create a new monitoring profile by clicking the “+” icon.

Check the required boxes based on your monitoring requirements.

For any processes alerting, Go to Processes Tab, then select alert option to check the process state.

Step 4b: Add the process information by clicking the options button.

Consecutive Reading options helps monitor whether process is running or not running for defined range [1-256] consecutive times.

It helps to reduce the false alerts.

Add the process name in the text box by pressing “+” button.

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Step 5: Now, add the WMI Server information which has to be monitored.

Right click on the created group and select the Add New WMI Server option.

Step 6: Provide a valid name, IP address, select the appropriate WMI Monitoring Profile Group and WMI Account for access.

Click on the Test button to test the server access.

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Step 7: Now we had enabled the monitoring for the Windows processes on Nectus.

Whenever the condition satisfies, then alerts get generated. We can view the alerts under Alerts -> Alert log.

We’ll also get the alerts in email form by enabling email alerts option with proper SMTP configuration.

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Congrats, now we have successfully created a monitoring profile to monitor the process in a Windows Server.

 

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How to use Nectus API Interface

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How to use Nectus API Interface

Quick Start Guide

Step 1: Log in to Nectus Portal. On the home page, select General Settings -> Miscellaneous.

 

 

 

Step 2: Next, we have to generate a new client ID and client secret for creating the token. Go to API Accounts and click on Create.

 

 

Step 3: Check the Enable box, enter the Client ID & Secret in the text box, and select the necessary access level (Read-Write or Read-Only) for the modules.

Here, we have given the Client ID as API_USER_1 and Client Secret as Nectus123. Click on the Ok button to create it.

 

 

Step 4: Each API Account with the Client’s information obtains a unique ID and gets listed.

We also have the Edit button to modify and the Delete button to remove the existing accounts with ID. Click on the Ok button to close the miscellaneous modal.

 

 

Step 5: Now, we have to create the API token with the help of the generated Client ID & Client Secret.

Here, we are using the POSTMAN Application for the sake of the demo. Use the below query and headers to get the access token.

API URL: https://<servername>/token/get

Request Type: GET

Headers: Authorization – client_id=API_USER_1 client_secret=Nectus123

 

 

Step 6: Click the Send button to obtain the Status Code with 200 Ok with the token details in the response body.

 

 

 

Step 7: Now, we can use the generated access token for all Nectus API’s.

Let’s try with some API Request.

API URL: https://<servername>/IPMonitor/restAPI/getStatusIPv4Monitor

Request Type: GET

Headers: Authorization – token=<generated-access-token>

After clicking the Send button, we obtain the list of IPv4Monitor groups with the associated IP address and status.

Congrats! We have successfully used the Nectus API interface to access the monitoring data points which will ease the third-party integration with other systems.

 

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How to Add and Configure IP Monitors

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Step 1: Login to Nectus portal. Then, click on IP Monitors.

Step 2: Right Click on IP Monitors and select Add Group to create a new monitoring group.

Step 3: Provide a unique name to the group and check the “Enable monitoring” option.

If monitoring requires custom ICMP monitoring timers then select optional Custom ICMP Monitoring Profile.

Choose the appropriate Polling Agent (Default is Main Polling Agent) and provide optional physical address.

Click on Ok to create a new IP monitor group.

Step 4: Now, the new group gets added under IP Monitors. The square icon indicates the status and since no device is added in the group, it’s shown in grey color.

Step 5: Right click on the IP Monitor Group to add a new IP Monitor into the group.

Step 6: Under the General Info Tab, provide a valid IP, name and optional physical address.

Then, click on Ok button to Add IP Monitor.

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Step 7: To test the reachabilty of IP Monitor, we can use Ping this IPv4 Monitor option. It performs a live ICMP ping test to the IP Monitor.

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Step 8: It also provides the options to repeat the test and continue ping tests.

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Step 9: To get the current device monitoring information, go to View IPv4 Monitor Info.

Step 10: The General Info provides the basic details about the device.

Alerts tab contains all the monitoring alerts. All alerts can be exported in *.csv format for further drill down. Click on eye icon in each row to get more information about the alert.

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Step 11: Right click on the device and Graphs to get a plot based on UP/DOWN state, latencies etc.

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Step 12: We can share the polled data from Nectus in several ways.

Step 13: We can share the access to graph using Generate Direct Access URL.

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Step 14: Further, we can also export all data points in a *.csv form using Export All option.

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Step 15: We can select multiple devices using CTRL + Left Click. Right click on any one to get the available options.

Step 16: Select the Graphs option to obtain the consolidated view of the plots for the selected devices.

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Step 17: To edit the added devices, right click on the device and choose properties.

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Step 18: Bulk import through a *.csv file can be performed and sample file can be downloaded from Import from CSV modal for quick reference.

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Step 19: Post the data import completion, skim through the device information, and select them to save into the database for the monitoring.

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Step 20: Additionally, we can select Delete IPv4 Monitor to delete the devices from monitoring.

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Congrats! We have successfully explored the lifecycle management of devices for ICMP monitoring using IP Monitor.

 

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How to Perform Nectus Software Upgrade

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Step 1. Download latest Nectus release from Nectus Support Portal (https://support.nectus5.com)

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Step 2.    Unzip Nectus distribution archive Nectus xxxxx.zip to any folder on Nectus Server.

 

For upgrade you should have two files:

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Step 3. Right-click on “Nectus Setup” and select “Run as administrator”.

 

 

 

Step 4. The Nectus Installer window opens. Click Next.

 

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Step 5. The License Agreement window opens. Click “I Agree”.

 

 

 

Step 6. The Upgrade window opens. Select the “Upgrade” mode.

 

Note: “Upgrade” mode (the default mode) preserves the database and all data in it.
!!! “Remove” mode will delete the existing database and all data will be erased!!!!

Click “Install”.

 

 

 

 

Step 7. The installation begins by saving resources.

 

 

 

 

Step 8. The old software components are uninstalled.

If desired, click on “Show details”.

 

 

Step 9. Show details lists the steps the installer is performing.

 

 

Step 10. When the old software components have been removed, the new version will be installed.

 

 

 

Step 11. The installation completes. Click Next.

 

 

Step 12. The “Completing Setup” window opens.

 

 

 

 

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How to Control Access Rights to Network Devices in Nectus

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In this article, we will show how to control the access rights to specific network devices visible in Nectus.

We will create a user group “Texas Admins” that have access only to specific subset of SNMP devices “Texas Network Devices” in Nectus database.

Step 1.  Create a custom SNMP device view “Texas Network Devices” in Inventory -> Views -> SNMP Device Views

Step 2. The SNMP Devices Views window opens. Click on Create.

Step 3. The Add SNMP Devices View window opens. Give the view a name “Texas Network Devices”.

Select desired devices in the window on the right (Available SNMP devices).

When all are selected, click on the Left Arrow key to move the selected devices from the Available window to the Selected window.

We selected nine devices.

Step 4. Selected devices move into the Selected SNMP Devices window. Click Save.

 

Step 5. Looking in the SNMP Devices Views window, we see that the view “Texas Network Devices” has been created and has nine devices.

 

 

Step 6. Create Admin User group “Texas Admins”  in Settings->  Admin Accounts

 

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Step 7. Navigate to Settings → Admin Accounts.

 

Step 8. The Admin Accounts window opens. Select User Groups, and click Create.

 

Step 9. The Add Users Group window opens. Enter the Group Name (Texas Admins), select the Access Right (Read Only), click Views.

 

Step 10. Select desired View “Texas Network Devices” that members  of this Admin group can see.

 

Step 11. Click OK.

Step 12.  Create User in “Texas Admins” Group.

Step 13. In the Admin Accounts window, click on User List and click Create.

Step 14. The Add User Account window opens.

Fill in the fields (First Name, Last Name, Email/Username).

Create and confirm password. Assign to group (Texas Admins). Click OK.

 

 

Step 15. In Admin Accounts window, verify that new user (Mike Fletcher) now appears with Group Texas Admins.

 

Step 16. In the Admin Accounts window, click User Groups and click on Texas Admins.

Verify the assigned view for SNMP Devices Views is Texas Network Devices.

 

Step 17. Logout and log back in as Mike Fletcher.

 

In the Inventory window under SNMP Devices you should only see the 9 devices assigned to “Texas Network Devices”.

 

 

 

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Configuring SNMP OID for Memory utilization Monitoring

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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.

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How to install additional polling agent

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Step 1: Login to Nectus Portal in the home page. Select Settings -> Global Monitoring Settings.

Step 2: Next, select Distributed Agents to get the list of configured agents. Click on Create button to create a new poller agent.

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Step 3: Now, provide a valid and unique name to the agent. Here, the Distributed Agent Name is “Regional USA Polling“. Select the enabled checkbox and click on Ok to create the poller object in the main server.

Note: Once the agent installation is complete, the RED changes to GREEN.

Additionally, the status of configured agent can also be checked on home page near the search icon.

Now, let’s start the installation on the Additional Polling Agent Server.

Step 4: After the download is complete, double click on the exe file. Installer window opens up. Click on Next to proceed with the installation.

Step 5: Go through the License Agreement carefully and then click on the Agree button.

Step 6: Select Additional Polling Agent in the Installation Type window and click on the Next button.

Step 7: Select the relevant options. Click on the Next button.

Step 8: Select the destination folder. Make sure, a minimum of 2GB of disk space is available in the selected drive. Click on the Next button.

Step 9: Next, provide the same name in the Additional Agent Name as in step 3. Fill the main polling agent IP address in the textbox and click on the Next button.

Step 10: Warning: Ensure that we open 10167 and 10168 ports between the new and main agent. If not, below error message will pop up.

Step 11: Then, key in a password to integrate the agent with the main server database.

Step 12: Log in to the main server and go to C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\htdocs\protected\config\ path and open database.ini file.

Step 13: Copy the password of vconsole username and paste it on the additional agent installer password textbox and click on the Install button.

Step 14: Once the installation completes, click on Next to proceed further.

Step 15: Finally, click on the Finish button and close the window.

As mentioned earlier, the additional poller status automatically converts to GREEN after successful installation.

Congrats! We have successfully installed the additional polling agent and integrated it with the main server.

 

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How to enable VMware Monitoring in Nectus

Enable Monitoring of VMware Using Nectus

Step 1. Navigate to Settings → General Settings → VMware VCenter Integration .

Step 2. VMware – vCenters window opens.

Step 3. Left-click Create New Group.

Step 4. The Add VCenter Group window opens.

Step 5. Name the Group (MyvCenter). Check Enable Monitoring. Click OK.

Step 6. Group Name appears in VMware – vCenters window.

Step 7. In VMware – vCenters window, click on vCenter Servers.

Step 8. Click Add.

Step 9. In the Add vCenter Server window, Enter Server name, IP address, Username and Password. Check that correct group is selected. Click Test.

Step 10. Test Connection tests OK (see message Test Connection OK). Click OK in lower right corner of window.

Step 11. Server shows in list of servers in VMware – vCenters window. Click Close.

Step 12. In Nectus main menu, on the left, click on VMware vCenter. A drop-down menu appears.

Step 13. Expand the list of ESX Hosts or Datastores to verify import. It may take up to 15 min for all objects to be discovered and loaded to Nectus.

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How to install SSL Certificate for Nectus GUI

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This guide explains how to generate the CSR code and install a commercial SSL certificate for Windows Apache so that you could access your Nectus GUI page securely via HTTPS.

It assumes that during Nectus installation, you selected the default location which is C:\Program Files\Nectus.

If you installed Nectus in a different folder, make sure to adjust the commands and locations given in this guide accordingly.

In general, in order to have a website accessible using secure HTTPS connection, the web server must have a pair of public and private keys configured.

The public key must be signed by a trusted Certificate Authority and added to a digital SSL certificate.

To obtain that certificate, you will need to send the certificate signing request (CSR) code to your SSL provider. Please refer to instructions below:

 

Generating CSR using OpenSSL

  1. On your Windows server, press Win+R, enter cmd and hit OK

  1. Now you will need to run a certain OpenSSL command to generate a new CSR/Key pair for your future SSL certificate.
  2. The command template is below, make sure that you adjust the highlighted fields – they must be related to your system:

“C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\bin\openssl” req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout “C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\conf\yourdomain.key” -out “C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\conf\yourdomain.csr” -config “C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\conf\openssl.cnf” -subj “/CN=example.com/C=US/ST=California/L=Los Angeles/O=Yourcompany Inc./” -addext “subjectAltName = DNS:subdomain1.example.com,DNS:subdomain2.example.com,DNS:anotherexample.com”

Explanations for each field:

CN= this is the field for the primary domain of your SSL

C= enter the ISO 3166-2 compliant country code here

ST= the field for the state

L= the field for the city

O= the name of your company. If you do not have a company or do not wish to indicate it, simply put NA

DNS: additional domain names (also known as SANs – Subject Alternative Names) that should be included into the certificate;

you can include multiple SANs in the CSR code, however, double-check with your SSL provider whether your SSL certificate supports SANs.

  1. Executing the command should produce the following output:

Once done, the C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\conf\ directory will have two new files, the file with the CSR code (.csr) and the file with the private key (.key).

We’ll leave the private key for the time being. The CSR code has to be provided to your certificate vendor — this code is the base for your commercial SSL certificate.

Please contact your SSL vendor regarding SSL certificate purchase.

 

When the SSL is issued, you should receive at least two files: SSL certificate in a .crt (or .pem, .cer) file, and the CA-bundle (also can be called intermediate CA, root CA certificates)

with extensions like .ca-bundle, .crt. Please note that Apache requires only PEM-encoded certificates, so PKCS#7 or PKCS#12 encoded SSLs won’t work.

Configuring SSL for Apache

  1. Upload those files to the C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\conf\ directory.
  2. Then, go to the C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\conf\extra folder, and open the httpd-ssl.conf file in Notepad.
  3. Find and edit the following directives and make sure that they point to the SSL certificate, Private Key, and the CA-bundle files accordingly:

SSLCertificateFile “${SRVROOT}/conf/yourdomain.crt”

SSLCertificateKeyFile “${SRVROOT}/conf/yourdomain.key”

SSLCACertificateFile “${SRVROOT}/conf/yourdomain.ca-bundle”

Note that the SSLCACertificateFile directive is commented out by default.

You need to delete the # sign at the beginning of the string to uncomment the directive.

  1. Save the configuration file
  2. Return back to the C:\Program Files\Nectus\Web\Apache24\bin folder and double-click on ApacheMonitor.exe

  1. The ApacheMonitor app will appear in the system tray at the lower right corner of your screen. Find and click it there.

  1. Hit “Restart”

  1. Now you can try accessing your Nectus GUI page in the browser via HTTPS: https://yourdomain.com

 

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Configuring Linux Monitoring in Nectus

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Configuring Linux Monitoring in Nectus

Nectus Server 1.55 adds feature to monitor some system parameters on hosts running Linux. Enabling this feature for your infrastructure requires two steps:

  • Configuring of Nectus Server;
  • Installing and configuring of Nectus remote agents on target Linux machines.

This guide describes steps for Nectus Server configs. Installing and configuring of Linux remote agents are described here.

Linux monitoring integration

Choose the following menu item from the Nectus GUI to set global Linux monitoring parameters.

This will open the next window:

  • Agent mode determines whether the agent runs in passive mode (when it waits for an incoming connection from the server and then collects the required metrics) or in active mode when the agent connects to the server pro-actively and sends the collected data.
  • Server TCP port sets the server port number for incoming connections from the agents running in active mode. If you set Agent mode to passive then this value is not used.
  • Pre-shared Key determines the secret key used to encrypt and decrypt messages between Nectus Server and the monitoring agents. You can set string of any length but recommended length is from 8 to 16 characters. The exactly same key should be set in all agents’ configuration files (parameter SERVER_PRESHARED_KEY, see details here).

Click OK to save configured parameters.

 

 

Select “Linux Monitoring Settings” from the “Monitoring” menu to configure your monitoring profiles for Linux machines.

Click “Create” to create a new monitoring profile:

In the following form enter the name of your profile and choose metrics you would like to monitor:

 

Configure the necessary metric parameters like minimal and maximal thresholds, alerting etc.

You can create any number of profiles and assign each of them to different group of Linux machines.

Linux Servers

 

Select “Linux Servers” from the “Inventory” menu to configure groups and servers to be monitored.

Click “Create new Group” in the next form:

 

Enter “Group Name” for the new group, select “Enable monitoring” and choose the desired Monitoring Profile for this server group:

Also select the appropriate alert recipients in this form.

You can create any number of monitoring groups if you need to apply different profiles or alert recipients for different server groups.

When you have finished with the groups switch to the next tab “Servers” in the same form and click “Add Server” to add a Linux server to be monitored:

In the next window enter the Hostname (optional, it will be obtained later during the monitoring process), IP address, TCP port of the remote agent’s listening socket (default 5400) and choose the appropriate Group:

You can choose different values of TCP port for different servers according to your network configuration. But note that this value must match the parameter AGENT_PORT set in the agent’s configuration file (see details here).

After clicking “OK” you will see the server in the following list and you will be able to View, Edit and Delete the server (operations are marked with a red square).

After you have added all the desired servers and installed the remote agents the process of monitoring of your Linux hosts will start automatically.

 

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Device View Auto Population Rules

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Device View Auto Population Rules

Device View is the logical grouping of the devices that can be used in different places within the Nectus application. In the previous versions of Nectus, the user would manually add devices into device views which may become a significant management overhead.

In Nectus version 1.55 we introduced an ability to automatically populate device views based on specific conditions such as device names, types, etc.

User can define a set of conditions which has to be true for Nectus to automatically add devices to device views.

This article will guide you through the process of defining the auto population rules for device views.

To access your SNMP Device Views go to Inventory Views SNMP Device View

 

 

To add a new Device View, click Create in the upper right hand corner of the SNMP Devices Views page.

 

Give a name to your new Device View.

 

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Press Save button to finish creation of Device view.

 

Open again newly created device view and in the upper right-hand corner, select Edit Rules.

This will open the Devices View Auto Population Rules page.

 

Select the plus sign to add a new Auto Population Rule.

 

Add all the required Auto-population rules and press Ok button to Save.

If multiple rules are defined all the rules must be TRUE for device to be automatically added. (Logical AND).

Your rules will be processed daily at 3:00 PM.

If you would like to apply your rules immediately, press the Apply Rules button.

 

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Monitoring BGP Sessions with Nectus

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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.

 

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UPS Health Status Monitoring with Nectus

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UPS Status Monitoring with Nectus

Health monitoring of UPS units is one of the most critical tasks of network infrastructure monitoring.

If UPS fails during power outage it results in immediate network downtime resulting in loss of revenue and degrading user experience.

Most of the modern UPS Units perform daily self-tests and results of those self-tests are available via SNMP protocol.

Our goal is to collect those self-test results on regular basis and generate an alert or incident when self-test indicates a UPS failure.

Step 1. Determine which SNMP OID to use

Very first step before you can start monitoring UPS health status is to determine which SNMP OID contains self-test information for your UPS units.

You can open a support case with your UPS vendor and request SNNP OID string for self-test information.

For example, SNMP OID for self-test information from UPS manufactured by APC is .1.3.6.1.4.1.318.1.1.1.7.2.3.0

This OID returns following values:

1 = Ok

2 = Failed

3 = Invalid Test

4 = Test In Progress

 

Step 2. Create Device View that contain all UPS units

Next step is to create a Device View that contain all UPS units that we want to monitor.

To create a Device View go to Inventory -> Views -> SNMP Device Views.

 

Create a new Device Vice called “UPS Units”

 

 

Step 3. Create Custom SNMP Tracker for UPS Self-Test Info

Now we are ready to create a custom SNMP tracker that will be polling our UPS units every 5 min for self-test information.

In Nectus GUI go to Monitoring → SNMP Monitoring Settings → Custom SNMP Trackers

 

Press “Create” button to bring up Custom SNMP Tracker creation interface.

Complete tracker General information tab with correct SNMP OID and select Device View that contains all UPS units that we want to monitor.

 

Select Email and SMS list for Alert Recipients.

In “Alerts” Tab we need to specify which status values will be considered Normal and which values should trigger Alerts.

You can specify multiple values separated by comma.

 

Define an Alert Severity level for Alarm Values as Informational, Warning or Critical.

Define number of consecutive readings for which UPS self-test status must report an Alarm condition before formal Alert is created.

Nectus performs one SNMP poll per 5 min.

If you define value for consecutive readings as 3 it should result in Alert created after 15 minutes of True Alarm conditions.

Press “Save” to complete Custom SNMP tracker creation for UPS Status Monitoring

This completes creation of custom tracker that will be monitoring UPS self-test information on all APC UPS units in your network.

 

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Suppression of Frequent Identical Alerts In Nectus

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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.

 

 

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Importing WMI Servers from CSV file to Nectus

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Importing WMI Servers from CSV file to Nectus

To import a list of Windows Servers from CSV file to Nectus prepare a CSV file with only single column containing list of IP addresses of Windows Servers.

No other information is required.

File format example in Excel.

To start import, right-click on WMI Server Group that you want to import servers into and select “Import  WMI Servers from CSV file” option

 

 

Select CSV File that you prepared.

 

 

Press “Start” button

 

Nectus will import each server individually and collect basic Server information via WMI Interface.

 

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Configuring WMI Integration in Nectus

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Configuring WMI Integration in Nectus

Nectus uses WMI Interface in several of its modules.

List of modules that depends on WMI Integration:

  1. Windows Server Monitoring Module
  2. IPAM Module

In Windows Server Monitoring module Nectus uses WMI interface to poll Windows Servers for critical health metrics such as CPU and RAM Utilization etc.

In IPAM Module Nectus uses WMI interface to interact with Microsoft DNS and DHCP servers while Importing and creating reservations.

WMI Integration settings must be complete before Nectus can communicate with Windows Servers in those modules.

To complete WMI Integration go to Settings -> General Settings -> WMI Integration

Click on “WMI Integration” link and complete all the required fields for WMI Service account

that will be used by Nectus connect to Windows Servers via WMI Interface.

WMI Service account should not have password expiration policy to prevent Integration from breaking every time password has to be changed.

Use “Test” button to test Service account credential against any of Windows Servers of your choice.

After connection “Test” is passed WMI Integration is complete.

 

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Adjusting min. detectable ICMP outage duration in Nectus

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Adjusting Min. detectable ICMP outage duration in Nectus

When Nectus is configured to monitor UP/DOWN Status for network devices with ICMP it sends Echo packets at preset interval called Inter-Packet Delay.

By default, this Interval is set to 10 seconds.

Network Device is considered down if Echo-Reply is not received for “N” consecutive Echo packets.

By default “N” is set to 10.

So, by combining Inter-Packet Delay and “N” Value we can see that minimum duration of the outage that can be detected by Nectus with default settings is 100 seconds.

Sometimes when network a prone to fast transient outages or burstable traffic patterns that can impact ICMP it may be beneficial to increase minimum detectable ICMP outage duration to higher value. This can helps to eliminate alerts about short lived outages and only alert on outages that have more lasting impact.

To adjust Inter-Packet Delay or “N” Value go to “Monitoring -> Global Monitoring Settings”

 

And adjust values on “ICMP Monitoring” Tab according to your business needs.

 

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Monitoring HTTP URLs with Nectus NMS

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Monitoring HTTP URLs with Nectus NMS

Have you ever been surprised to find out your website hadn’t been running or online?

Realtime status updates of your website can relieve you of the frustration of downtime and provide with instant alerts to your team.

Nectus HTTP Monitoring module can take the burden of URL monitoring away and provide real-time status of thousands of URLs, all using one quick view.

Nectus can poll websites on with preset frequency and alert you via Email or SMS if any of the websites are down.

Creating URL Groups in Nectus

HTTP URL Monitoring starts with creating URL Groups.

To create a URL group, right click on the Web Servers group on the left side panel. When the context menu appears, click on Add New Group.

After clicking Add New Group, a pop-up window appears.

Window allows you to set a Poll Frequency, which defined how often Nectus will poll your website.

Enable Monitoring can be checked to begin monitoring for all URLs that are members of this group.

Send Alerts to Email Group and Send Alerts to SMS Group can be checked to specify URL Down Alert recepients for Email or SMS notifications.

To modify members’ list of any of the existing E-mail or SMS groups click on the group name.

Once you click on the Alert group name a popup window appears where changes can be made to the existing alert groups.

Adding URLs to Groups in Nectus

After creating URL groups, you now may add URLs that you want to monitor to the group you have just created.

Right Click on any of the group name and select: Add New URL

After clicking Add New URL, you can add the URL and give the URL a specific name. You may also specify which group the URL goes into.

Once you have added the URL, monitoring start automatically.

Repeat this process for every URL you’d like to enable for monitoring.

After you have finished adding all of your URLs you will be able to quickly see the status of all the URLs in the left side panel.

 

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Multiple Alert Email Aggregation in Nectus

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Multiple Alert Email Aggregation in Nectus

Very often during site level power or network outages or during network maintenance multiple devices become offline at the same time causing multiple individual DOWN Email alerts to be sent at the same time.

Depending in the size of the site it can be well over hundreds or even thousands alert emails to be sent out to corresponding e-mail recipients configured for given site.

Starting from version 1.2.52 Nectus offers an option to aggregate multiple DOWN or UP email alerts into a single multi-device alert notification containing a list of all devices that became DOWN or UP within last monitoring interval.

To enable Alert Aggregation, go to Monitoring -> Global Monitoring Settings: “Alert” Tab

And Select “Aggregate multiple UP/DOWN Alerts” Option.

 

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