1. Keeping Network Monitoring Current using Automated Nagios Configurations (WIP) Greg Wickham APAN July 2005

2. Is the network being monitored correctly? Greg Wickham APAN July 2005

3. Contents Background Monitoring Overview / Requirements Solution Architecture Monitoring Verification Conclusion

4. Contents Background Monitoring Overview / Requirements Solution Architecture Monitoring Verification Conclusion

5. GrangeNet Architecture

6. GrangeNet Monitoring Device TypesQuantity Routers6 Servers6 Switches4 16

7. GrangeNet Monitoring Device TypesQuantityProbes Routers6310 Servers66 Switches47 16323

8. GrangeNet Monitoring Device TypesQuantityProbes Routers6310 Servers66 Switches47 16323 Nagios Lines ( services.cfg )3172

9. GrangeNet Monitoring (ACT Edge) Probe TypesQuantityNotes Fan3 Hardware17 Ping1 Power2 Temperature1(39) Interfaces16 MSDP Peerings8 BGP Peerings15 OSPF2 Total Probes:65

10. GrangeNet Monitoring (ACT Edge) Is that everything that can be monitored?

11. GrangeNet Monitoring (ACT Edge) Is that everything that can be monitored? No!

12. GrangeNet Monitoring (ACT Edge) Is that everything that can be monitored? No! What else? –BGP address family peerings Multicast / Unicast / IPv6 –Software versions –Hardware versions –Latency (of links) –Usage (of links) –…

13. Contents Background Monitoring Overview / Requirements Solution Architecture Monitoring Verification Conclusion

14. Monitoring Solution Solution Goals: –Verifying network is correctly monitored –Minimise replication of data –Simplistic integration with existing systems –Easy to maintain –Extensible –Flexible –Efficient

15. Monitoring Overview Facts: –Networks change –Updating is tedious –Monitoring Difficult to Auditing Answers Required: –Is the network performing optimally? –Has a change occurred? –What is the status of the network? –Is the monitoring accurate?

16. Contents Background Monitoring Overview / Requirements Solution Architecture Monitoring Verification Conclusion

17. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Configuration data stored as XML Describes: Devices to monitor How to monitor Nagios templates Device Templates

18. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Daemon reads configuration data Verifies devices are monitored correctly Generates Nagios Configurations Performs device probes Runs periodically

19. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Nagios Configuration Nagios configuration automatically generated by Monitoring Daemon

20. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Nagios Configuration Nagios Daemon Nagios uses configuration supplied by monitoring daemon; Nagios configured to use ‘passive’ checks

21. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Nagios Configuration Nagios Daemon Network Devices Monitoring daemon queries all devices using SNMP; Check device telemetry against known configurations

22. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Nagios Configuration Nagios Daemon Network Devices Monitoring daemon sends Probe status direct to Nagios (Nagios running passive checks)

23. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Nagios Configuration Nagios Daemon Network Devices eMail SMS Web Nagios reports on network health as usual but does no active checking of its own

24. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Nagios Configuration Nagios Daemon Network Devices eMail SMS Web Report Report generated of device monitoring comparison

25. Solution Architecture Monitoring Configuration Monitoring Daemon Nagios Configuration Nagios Daemon Network Devices RRDtool eMail SMS Web Report Collected data fed to optional sub-systems

26. Solution Architecture Result –Only one process communicates to all devices Very Efficient Query time for 34 devices is < 10 seconds –As only one daemon communicates to the devices the load on each network device is minimised (collected data is distributed as necessary) –As Nagios does less work the monitoring server is less loaded (Nagios is heavy)

27. Contents Background Monitoring Overview / Requirements Solution Architecture Monitoring Verification Conclusion

28. Monitoring Verification Templates are used to define pre-requisite monitoring probes Devices are attached to templates

29. Monitoring Verification Device Description edge1.vic 202.0.98.68 … ibgp-mesh ebgp-peerings ospf system … <probe type=“ibgp-mesh" description="AS18062 - edge1.nsw“ arg=“202.0.98.13” /> <probe type=“ebgp-peering" description="AS64670“ arg=“202.0.98.190” /> …

30. Monitoring Verification Template Description system-health bgpPeerState gn-noc level1-service

31. Monitoring Verification From the: –Device template; and –Monitoring Template an accurate report can be generated of the status of monitoring. All probe details are stored in XML so can be easily verified

32. Contents Background Monitoring Overview / Requirements Solution Architecture Monitoring Verification Conclusion

33. Due to efficiencies in the monitoring daemon: –Nagios doesn’t load the server –Other applications can share the SNMP data –Doesn’t load the network devices –Device probing is very quick Reduces complexity of Nagios configuration Generate reports identifying inaccuracies in existing monitoring Unified configuration data This is a Work in Progress

34. Status (Work in Progress) Current functionality: –Separate applications: Collecting data from devices; feed into Nagios Generating Nagios configurations To Do –Integrate applications –Complete Implementation Nagios templates –Documentation! Software –Perl –net-snmp –Nagios