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User Guide for Device Fault Manager 1.1 (With LMS 2.0)
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Index
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Preface
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Overview
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Network Elements Managed by DFM
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DFM Default Settings
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Product User Guide Chapter (No Title Available)
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The DFM Administration Console and Polling and Thresholds Console
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Working with the DFM Inventory
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DFM Inventory Collection
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Working with DFM Groups and Settings
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Polling
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Using DFM Adapters
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Administering DFM
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Viewing Results with the Monitoring Console
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Common Monitoring Console Tasks
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Excessive Restarts and Flapping
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MIBs Polled and SNMP Traps Processed
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SNMP Trap Notifier MIB
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Glossary
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Table Of Contents
Working with DFM Groups and Settings
How Managed Elements are Assigned to Groups
When Should I Create a New Group?
Default Polling and Threshold Groups
Modifying the Properties of Groups
Method for Editing Matching Criteria
Modifying the Parameters of Settings
Changing the Default Polling Threshold
Restoring the Default Parameter Values of a Setting
Method for Copying an Existing Group
Method for Creating a New Group
Working with DFM Groups and Settings
The management policies of DFM are controlled through groups and settings. How to control these policies is described in these topics:
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Default Polling and Threshold Groups
Polling groups and Threshold groups are displayed and edited using the Polling and Thresholds Console. This console is accessible through the Administration Console by selecting Edit > Polling and Thresholds.
How Groups and Settings Work
DFM uses components called groups to associate management policies with managed elements. There are two types of groups: Polling groups and Threshold groups.
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A group contains zero or more settings and is associated with zero or more members. A setting is a collection of thresholds or polling parameters associated with a particular diagnostic category. For example, the Processor and Memory Setting defines thresholds for monitoring processor and memory utilization.
DFM associates managed elements with the appropriate group during inventory collection. Each element that is a member of a group is configured according to the parameters defined by the group's settings. For example, the polling group Switches contains these four settings:
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When a switch is added to the Switches polling group, the polling parameters for monitoring its connectivity and performance are updated to reflect the settings of this group.
How Managed Elements are Assigned to Groups
When DFM inventories devices in the network, it automatically assigns managed elements to the appropriate group based on the group's matching criteria and priority. You cannot manually move elements from one group to another (but you can create new groups for these elements). Matching criteria are defined over the attributes of the managed element. A group is defined by four items.
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The additional matching criteria are attributes defined in the ICIM model for that managed element type. For example, a group for switches can use as matching criteria the attributes that are defined in the Switch class, such as IP address, location, and system contact.
The domain manager processes matching criteria in the following manner. First, managed elements are compared against the matching criteria of the group with the highest priority. If an element matches all of the criteria, it is added as a member of the group. If an element does not match all criteria, it is compared against the matching criteria of the group with the next highest priority, and so on.
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When Should I Create a New Group?
When the default groups are not sufficient for your monitoring needs, you can create new polling and threshold groups. For example, you might want a polling or thresholds group for devices that are geographically related, for your most critical devices, or for devices for which you want polling done more frequently.
Note that there is no 1-to-1 mapping between the classes displayed in the DFM topology and the polling and thresholds groups. If you want such a correspondence, you can create a new polling and threshold group for any class. For example, devices displayed under the Host class in the DFM topology are not categorized under a Hosts polling group (because there is no such polling group). Such devices would instead be included in the Other Systems polling group in the Polling and Thresholds Console. If you have many of these devices, you might find it helpful to create a Hosts polling group for these devices. Steps for creating new polling or thresholds groups is described in "Creating New Groups" section.
Default Polling and Threshold Groups
These topics describe the default polling groups and the default threshold groups, including their member groups, matching criteria, and default settings:
Default Polling Groups
DFM monitors managed devices using a combination of SNMP and ICMP polling. Fault and performance data is collected using SNMP. Connectivity between managed elements is determined using ICMP.
There are five default polling groups:
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Table 8-1 lists all of the default polling groups and their settings. The definitions and default values, which are visible in the Polling and Thresholds Console, are described in the "DFM Default Settings." The properties of the default polling groups (matching criteria, priority, and membership) are identical to the properties of the default System Resources Group under the Thresholds tab.
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Default Threshold Groups
A threshold is an adjustable parameter that is used by a domain manager in its analysis. Thresholds that are applicable to the same element type are combined into settings. For example, the Ethernet Interface/Port Performance Setting contains packet-based thresholds such as BroadcastThreshold, CollisionThreshold, and DiscardThreshold.
The threshold groups are divided into four categories:
Interface Groups
The thresholds for the interface groups are used to configure parameters for interface analysis. Null interfaces are unmanaged by default.
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Thresholds are determined by the interface's media type (e.g., Ethernet, ATM) and its role (primary, backup, or dial-on-demand).
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Access Ports Groups
The threshold groups for ports are used to configure parameters for port analysis. Thresholds are determined by the port's media type (e.g., Ethernet, ATM) and its role (access or trunk).
An access port is a switch port that is connected to a host. Access ports are unmanaged by default and are not associated with the access ports groups. An access port will automatically become managed if the host that it is connected to is added to the managed inventory or if it is explicitly managed.
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Trunk Ports Groups
The threshold groups for ports are used to configure parameters for port analysis. Thresholds are determined by the port's media type (e.g., Ethernet, ATM) and its role (access or trunk). A trunk port is a switch port that is connected to a switch, router, hub, or bridge.
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System Resource Groups
The system resource thresholds are used to configure parameters for device analysis. The sensitivity of the device thresholds is determined by the role of the device. The matching criteria for the System Resource Groups are identical to the matching criteria for the default polling groups.
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Modifying Groups
Although groups are divided into two categories, Polling and Thresholds, all groups are configured similarly. Groups consist of settings and members; settings consist of either polling or threshold parameters. The matching criteria specified for the group and the group's priority determine which managed elements are members of the group. These sections explain how to modify a group's properties and settings:
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Modifying the Properties of Groups
When a group is selected, the right panel of the Polling and Thresholds Console displays four tabs:
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Modifying the properties under these tabs changes the configuration of the group. When you finish editing the properties of a group, do the following:
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Method for Selecting Settings
The settings for a group determine the polling parameters or thresholds that are applied to members of the group. For example, the settings under the Switches Polling Group include Connectivity Polling, Environment Polling, Performance Polling - Processor and Memory, and Performance Polling - Ports and Interfaces.
The Settings tab is divided into two sections: Current Settings and Available Settings. Current Settings lists the settings that are applied to the group. Available Settings lists the settings that are not currently applied to the group.
To add or remove a setting:
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Method for Setting Priorities
Together, the Priorities and Matching Criteria parameters determine which managed elements are members of a group. Priority determines what group a managed element belongs to when it matches the criteria for two or more groups. When this occurs, the managed element becomes a member of the group with the higher priority.
The Priority tab displays the priority of groups relative to other groups of the same type, Polling or Threshold.
To change the priority of a group:
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Method for Editing Matching Criteria
Matching criteria, with priority, determine which managed elements are members of a group. The domain manager associates managed elements with the appropriate group during inventory collection. A managed element can be a member of only one Polling Group and one Threshold Group.
The matching criteria consist of a set of attributes that managed elements must meet to become a member of the group. For example, if a matching criterion uses the attribute Location with a value of "*NY*", all members of the group must contain the string "NY" in their system location MIB variable. Additional examples of device-level matching criteria include: SNMP address, vendor name, and class name.
Active matching criteria, which appear in the top of the Matching Criteria tab, have three fields: Name, Description, and Value.
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To add or remove a matching criterion:
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Use Disable to deactivate the criterion, moving it to the bottom of the Matching Criteria tab.
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To edit a matching criterion Value field:
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Modifying the Parameters of Settings
The parameters of a setting, whether the parameters define polling or set the broadcast threshold over a port, are adjusted in a similar manner. A setting may include a drop-down menu that provides a list of items or sliders that provide ranges of values.
To change the parameters of a setting:
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To change the value of a threshold, use one of the following methods:
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Changing the Default Polling Threshold
The polling threshold is set to four minutes, by default. You may want to adjust this threshold depending on your network configuration—specifically:
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A useful method for changing this threshold is to create a group and then assign a threshold to that group. For example, you might want to create a group of four or five routers and set those routers to poll every 30 seconds.
Restoring the Default Parameter Values of a Setting
The Restore Defaults button, which is visible when a setting is selected in the left panel of the Polling and Thresholds Console, restores the default values of all the parameters for the selected setting.
To restore the default parameters to a setting:
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Creating New Groups
Creating new groups provides a method for customizing DFM when the default groups and settings are not sufficient. Building a new group is similar to adjusting the settings and thresholds of existing groups. The new group requires settings and members to be effective.
Keep these points in mind when creating a group:
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There are two methods for creating a new group:
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The resulting group, regardless of the method you use, is assigned the lowest priority. When you create the group, you must assign the new group a higher priority than the Other Systems group for it to contain members.
Creating new groups changes the configuration of the DFM inventory. When you finish creating new groups and editing the settings, criteria, and group priorities, do the following:
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Method for Copying an Existing Group
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The type of group that you copy determines both its type and the settings it will contain. For example, you might copy the 10/100 Mb Ethernet Interface Group under the Thresholds tab. The new group will also be a threshold group and contain the same settings as the 10/100 Mb Ethernet Interface Group.
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Method for Creating a New Group
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Groups under the Polling tab include Polling Groups. Groups under the Thresholds tab include Interface Groups, Port Groups - Access Ports, Port Groups - Trunk Ports, and System Resource Groups.
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Wildcard Patterns
A wildcard pattern is a series of characters that are matched against incoming character strings. You can use these patterns when you define pattern matching criteria.
Matching is done strictly from left to right, one character or basic wildcard pattern at a time. Basic wildcard patterns are defined in Table 8-6. Characters that are not part of match constructs match themselves. The pattern and the incoming string must match completely. For example, the pattern abcd does not match the input abcde or abc.
A compound wildcard pattern consists of one or more basic wildcard patterns separated by ampersand (&) or tilde (~) characters. A compound wildcard pattern is matched by attempting to match each of its component basic wildcard patterns against the entire input string. For compound wildcard patterns, see Table 8-7.
If the first character of a compound wildcard pattern is an ampersand (&) or tilde (~) character, the compound is interpreted as if an asterisk (*) appeared at the beginning of the pattern. For example, the pattern ~*[0-9]* matches any string not containing any digits. A trailing instance of an ampersand character (&) can only match the empty string. A trailing instance of a tilde character (~) can be read as "except for the empty string."
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Special characters for compound wildcard patterns are summarized below.
