Customers use CiscoWorks LAN Management Solution (LMS) to manage Cisco® devices on a corporate network. This product includes several applications, one of which is Device Fault Manager (DFM). DFM provides fault monitoring, trap processing, and notifications through emails, Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps, and syslogs.
DFM uses SNMP to poll the devices in regular intervals (by default, 4 minutes) for various components like interface, memory, fan, temperature, and power supply. Based on the thresholds specified and using some internal calculations with the data polled, DFM finds the fault occurrence and generates the appropriate event. It also provides alert notifications based on the notification settings configured by the user. The user can modify the polling and threshold parameters for system-defined groups and can also edit the settings for customized groups. This paper deals with how a DFM user can configure Polling and Threshold Manager (PTM).
Prerequisites
LMS 3.2 with DFM 3.2 should be installed in a Windows/Solaris server. Add a few devices to CiscoWorks Common Services and import them to DFM. Wait until DFM completes learning about the devices and moves to a known state.
Polling Parameters
You can view the Polling Parameters page by navigating to DFM > Configurations > Polling and Thresholds and by clicking the Polling Parameters link on the left side. The screen displays various device type groups, customized user-defined groups, and four buttons to view, edit, preview polling parameters, and apply factory settings.
Viewing Polling Parameters
You can use the View button to see the current polling settings for each device in the selected device type group. Clicking the View button shows the device name, device type, parameters, default and current settings of the polling interval, the number of retries, and the timeout setting. It also shows whether polling is enabled or disabled and the overriding group. Devices that belong to multiple groups use the polling settings of the overriding group.
To view the polling parameters:
• Select a group, either a system-defined group or a customized group, under User Defined Group > Customizable Groups.
• Click the View button to see the polling settings for the selected group.
Figure 1 shows the polling parameters summary report for content networking devices.
Figure 1. Polling Parameter Summary for Content Networking
Configuring Polling Parameters
You can configure (or edit) the polling parameters of interest to you in any Common Services system-defined groups or user-defined customizable groups.
This includes changing the default polling intervals for each parameter, such as the environment setting, reachability settings, and so on for a particular group, to the values of interest to the user. The user can even disable or enable the polling for any components.
Apply Changes: After changing any polling or threshold parameter settings, we need to apply the changes in the DFM to reflect the new settings. This reconfigures the DFM in-charge process. As this is a costly operation, it is recommended that it be performed at the end of all changes.
Common Services System-Defined Groups
These are the groups that Common Services shares with DFM and that show in the user interface. These system-defined groups are visible in the Polling Parameters page if the group has any devices, that is, if there are any devices in that group.
This includes device types such as routers, switches and hubs, broadband cable, content networking, interfaces and modules, voice and telephony, network management, wireless, and so on.
To configure polling for these groups:
• Select any group under Polling Parameters > DeviceTypeGroups (for example, Routers).
• Click the Edit button.
• The screen in Figure 2 appears, in which we can modify the polling intervals.
• Click OK to save and close the window, or click Save just to save changes without closing the window, which allows further modifications.
Figure 2. Editing Polling Parameters in Device Fault Manager
In Figure 2 you can observe that the polling interval of the processor and memory utilization, environment, and reachability settings have been changed to 60 seconds. We can change the SNMP timeout and retry values also.
The Enabled column indicates whether polling for the corresponding parameter is enabled. If we clear the checkbox of any parameter, for example, Environment Settings, DFM will not poll for temperature, fan, and power supply-related MIBs for routers.
Customizable Groups
Before looking into configuring polling parameters for customizable groups, we will look at what a customizable group is and how to create one.
Customizable groups are user-defined groups customized using DFM group administration. Customizable device groups contain several devices that are grouped based on the rules set.
Figure 3, which shows the Group Administration window, is followed by a procedure to customize user-defined groups.
Figure 3. The Group Administration and Configuration Window
• Go to Configuration > Other configuration > Group Administration.
• Select DFM > User Defined Groups > Customizable Groups.
• Click Edit to create rules by which the devices will be grouped.
At a maximum we can customize seven such groups as shown in Figure 3. These customized groups would be visible in the Polling Parameters page.
Now let's edit the polling parameters for the above groups. See Figure 4.
• Select any group under Polling Parameters > UseDefinedGroups > Customizable Groups (for example, Customizable Group 1).
• Click the Edit button.
• The screen in Figure 4 appears, in which we can modify the polling intervals for each device type under that customized group. Not to confuse you here, but there is a chance that the grouped devices may be from different device-type groups, so we can edit settings for the type in which we are interested.
• Click OK to save and close the window, or click Save just to save changes without closing the window, which allows further modifications.
Figure 4. Editing Polling Parameters for Devices in a Customizable Group
Which Polling Intervals will DFM consider when a device falls into both system-defined groups (this is obvious) and customizable groups or more than one customizable group?
As mentioned earlier in this paper, "Devices that belong to multiple groups use the polling settings of the overriding group."
Preview: We can view the overriding group for each device in any device group prior to applying changes. If desired, we can change the priority of any group to make it an overriding group.
Figure 5 shows the preview report of Customizable Group 1 before applying changes.
Figure 5. Polling Parameter Summary for Customizable Group 1
In Figure 5, we can observe that the overriding group of the 10.77.208.17 device is /CS@lms-dfm-sf440/System Defined Groups/Routers, though this device belongs to Customizable Group 1 as well.
So for the device 10.77.208.17, DFM uses the polling settings of the group routers.
In the following section we will see how to make Customizable Group 1 the overriding group by changing its priority.
Setting Priorities
To change the priority of any group, do the following:
• Click Setting Priorities on the Polling and Thresholds page.
• Select Device Polling Groups.
• Increase or decrease the priority of any group by moving it up or down with the buttons provided.
• Click Save.
Figure 6. Setting Priorities in Device Fault Manager
In Figure 6 we can see the priority of Customizable Group 1 is increased above the Routers group. Now open the preview report of Customizable Group 1 or Routers.
What could we observe now?
The overriding group of device 10.77.208.17 changes to /CS@lms-dfm-sf440/Customizable Groups/Customizable Group 1 as shown in Figure 7.
Now DFM polls the device 10.77.208.17 with the setting of Customizable Group 1.
Figure 7. Polling Parameter Summary for Customizable Group 1
Threshold Parameters
A user can view this page by navigating to DFM > Configurations > Polling and Thresholds and by clicking the Threshold Parameters link on the left side.
The screen displays various device type groups, customized user-defined groups, DFM system-defined groups, and four buttons to view, edit, preview polling parameters, and apply factory settings.
Viewing Threshold Parameters
Clicking the View button will launch the Threshold Parameters report for any selected group. This report shows the device name, type, threshold category, enabled status, parameters, default and current values, and overriding group of every device in the selected device group.
Figure 8 is the threshold parameter summary report of the network management group.
Figure 8. Threshold Parameter Summary for Network Management
Now let us see how to configure threshold parameters.
Configuring Threshold Parameters
We can change the threshold parameters for different type of groups as follows:
• Common Services system-defined groups like Routers, Switches, and Wireless types, and so on, as in polling settings.
• User-defined groups:
– Customizable Access Port Groups (1, 2, 3, 4, A, B, C)
– Customizable Groups (as in polling parameters ) (1, 2, 3, 4, A, B, C)
– Customizable Interface Groups (1, 2, 3, 4, A, B, C)
– Customizable Trunk Port Groups (1, 2, 3, 4, A, B, C)
• DFM System-Defined Groups
– Access Port Groups
1 Gigabit Ethernet
10 MB-100 MB Ethernet
ATM
Others
– Interface Groups
1 GB Ethernet
10 MB-100 MB Ethernet
ATM
Backup
Dial-on-Demand
FDDI
ISDN B channel
ISDN D channel
ISDN physical interface
Others
Serial
Token Ring
– Trunk Port Groups
1 GB Ethernet
10 MB-100 MB Ethernet
ATM
Others
Figure 9 shows one level up in the group hierarchy.
Figure 9. Configuring Threshold Parameters
Common Services System-Defined Groups
To configure thresholds for Common Services system-defined groups:
• Select any group under Threshold Parameters > DeviceTypeGroups (for example, Routers).
• Click the Edit button.
• The screen in Figure 10 appears, in which we can modify the threshold values of different parameters for three threshold categories.
• Click OK to save and close the window, or click Save to just save changes without closing the window, which allows further modifications.
Figure 10. Editing System-Defined Groups
Customizing settings will be discussed in the section "Customizing Threshold Settings."
There are three types of threshold categories for Common Services system-defined groups as in Figure 10.
• Environment settings
– Relative temperature threshold
– Relative voltage threshold
• Processor and memory settings
– Backplane utilization threshold
– Memory buffer miss threshold
– Free memory threshold
– Memory fragmentation threshold
– Memory buffer utilization threshold
– Processor utilization threshold
• Reachability settings
– Restart trap threshold
– Restart trap window
Under each category there are several threshold parameters as shown in the preceding list, and users can modify values of interest.
If we change the processor utilization threshold to 80 percent, then a High Utilization event will be generated if the polled device's CPU utilization exceeds 80 percent.
DFM System-Defined Groups
This category has three groups, the Access Port, Interface, and Trunk Port groups.
For DFM system-defined groups, the following are the threshold categories available:
• Generic interface/port performance settings
– Broadcast threshold
– Error traffic threshold
– Utilization threshold
– Queue drop threshold
– Error threshold
– Collision threshold
– Discard threshold
• Interface/port flapping settings
– Link trap window
– Link trap threshold
• Backup interface support settings
– Maximum uptime
• Dial-on-demand interface support settings
– Maximum uptime
When a system-defined device group has members, based on its function capability a default active threshold list is populated in the Active column. The Optional column contains a list of inactive settings. Users have the option to select or deselect settings.
• The Access Port and Trunk Port groups support generic interface/port performance settings and interface/port flapping settings, but only the interface/port performance setting is in the active settings list. The interface/port flapping setting is optional.
• Interface groups support all four threshold categories.
The 10 G, 1 G, 10 MB-100 MB, FDDI, Token ring groups have only generic interface/port performance settings in the active settings list by default.
The ATM, ISDN physical interface, serial, and others groups have generic interface/port performance settings and interface/port flapping settings in the active settings list by default.
The Backup and ISDN B groups have backup interface support settings in the active list by default.
The dial-on-demand group has dial-on-demand interface support settings in the active list by default.
The ISDN D group has only interface/port flapping settings in the active list by default.
In all the above cases the settings not present in the active list are available in the optional settings list.
Note: An interface group can have either backup interface support or dial-on-demand interface support enabled but cannot have both enabled.
• Select any group under Access/Trunk/Interface Group and click Edit.
• Customize the settings as explained in the section "Customizing Threshold Settings."
• Modify the threshold values of interest.
• Save and apply changes.
If we enable the "Disable All Threshold Settings for This Group" check box while editing, all the threshold settings for the ports and interfaces of the particular group will be deleted. It is just like disabling thresholds. No events will be generated correspond to these members.
Customizable Groups
Threshold settings will be different for customizable groups and customizable trunk/access/interface groups.
1. User-defined groups and customizable groups support all three threshold categories as in Common Services system-defined groups (environment settings, processor and memory settings, and reachability settings) and are enabled by default. Select the appropriate device type and threshold category while editing threshold parameters as shown in Figure 11. Use the Preview button to view the overriding groups for this customizable group alone.
Note: Preview will not work for customizable interface/access/trunk and DFM system-defined groups.
Figure 11. Managing Thresholds for Customizable Groups
2. Customizable access port and trunk port groups will support only generic interface/port performance settings and interface/port flapping settings. However, both the threshold settings are disabled by default and are found in the optional settings list. The active settings list is empty.
3. Customizable interface groups support all four threshold categories, as in the DFM interface group settings; the only difference is that all are disabled by default, that is, are in the optional settings list. The active settings list is empty.
Once the thresholds are customized we can edit the threshold parameters and increase the priority to set itself as an overriding group.
From this we can observe that the active settings for customizable interface/access/trunk ports are empty by default.
In the case of 2 and 3, if we enable the "Disable All Threshold Settings for This Group" check box while editing, all the threshold settings for the ports and interfaces of the particular group will be deleted. It is just like disabling thresholds. No events will be generated correspond to these members
Customizing Threshold Settings.
Customizing threshold settings is more like enabling and disabling the active threshold settings.
Whenever we try to edit any trunk/access or customizable access/trunk/interface groups we get a pop-up similar to Figure 12, as no settings were enabled by default.
Figure 12. DFM Lets the User Know if There Are No Settings Available for Configuration
So now to activate settings, click Customize Settings. The window shown in Figure 13 opens, in which we can make optional settings active settings and vice versa for any device groups.
Figure 13. The Customize Settings Window
Note: An Interface group can have either backup interface support or dial-on-demand interface support enabled but cannot have both enabled.
Setting Priorities
For setting priorities to threshold groups, we have four queues as below:
• Device threshold groups: If you want to increase the priority for customizable groups, select this radio button and edit inside the window.
• Interface threshold groups: If you need to increase the priority for customizable interface/DFM interface groups, select this radio button.
• Access port threshold group: If you need to increase the priority of customizable access ports/DFM access ports, use this.
• Trunk port threshold group: If you need to increase the priority of customizable trunk ports/DFM trunk ports, use this.
The screen shot in Figure 14 represents this.
Figure 14. Setting Priorities to Threshold Groups
Factory Settings: The Factory Settings button will restore all the priority settings of the selected queue to the default settings.
After saving any changes in polling parameters, threshold parameters, or priority settings, we will be asked to apply the changes. After all the changes are made, if we have the desired overriding groups, we can perform the Apply Changes operation.
Troubleshooting Steps
Issue 1: Launching PTM screens throws an error message.
The reason is that the server might not yet be ready. Please wait for some time before retrying. If an error condition still occurs, then run "pdshow PTMServer" in the command prompt. If this process is stopped, restart the CiscoWorks daemon manager service.
Issue 2: Devices are not polled with the updated polling intervals.
The user has not performed the Apply Changes operation, so DFM is using the old settings to poll. Do the Apply Changes operation and wait for some time. Then DFM will poll with the updated values.
