Understanding the VPN 3000 Monitor

This chapter introduces the VPN 3000 Monitor and shows some sample displays you can produce with the application.

What it is

The VPN 3000 Monitor (Monitor) is a stand-alone Java application that polls for information from multiple VPN 3000 Concentrators (VPN Concentrators) in a network and displays this information in graphical format. This application monitors only the VPN 3000 Concentrator Series and is not meant to replace any existing network management systems.

What it does

The Monitor lets you see information such as:

Top-level status of all VPN Concentrators in a network in one window (called the VPN Concentrator Network -- Summary window).
Detailed status for individual VPN Concentrators in the network (called the Profile window).
Trends over time graphically, for example, amount of throughput over three months on a selected VPN Concentrator.
Thresholds for numbers of users, CPU use, and throughput.
Traps, warning messages and alarms.

The Monitor also lets you:

Set notifications via email addresses to inform administrators when warning and alarm thresholds have been exceeded.
Launch the VPN 3000 Manager (Manager or Browser) to manage a selected VPN Concentrator. For example, upon seeing that one of the VPN Concentrators has exceeded an alarm threshold, you can log in to that VPN Concentrator, explore the problem further, and take corrective action.
Answer questions such as:
- Are any VPN Concentrators in the network generating severity 1 traps?
- Which VPN Concentrator in the network is a specific individual connected to?
- Who are the top ten users who have been connected to a VPN Concentrator the longest?
- Who are the top ten users generating the most data through a selected VPN Concentrator?
- How many packets per second are moving through a selected VPN Concentrator?

Sample displays

Here are some sample displays that you can see while using the Monitor.

The following graph shows the percent of load on the CPU on a VPN Concentrator over a 24-hour period. You can change the time period dynamically to see trends over a week, a month, or three months. Each dot on the graph represents a data point in time. This varies according to the time period over which the graph is tracking data, for example, on the day view, every 10 minutes or six data points per hour.

Figure 1-1: CPU utilization over one day

You can also see the same information as a table, by clicking on the View Table option.

Figure 1-2: CPU utilization in table view

The next graph shows througVPN 3000 Monitor User Guidehput in the number of packets per second over a week, with the highest value (high-water mark) in the series marked at 1354 (the high-water mark remains on the graph, appears in red to match the color of the data points, and has a red border around it). The average throughput for the time period above the cursor in this graph is 1075. For example, in the day view, the value above the cursor is an average for the 10 minutes that the data point represents. As you move your cursor from point to point, the Monitor displays the value of each point within a box.

Figure 1-3: Throughput in number of packets per second

How it works

The Monitor uses the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to poll VPN Concentrators in a network and gather statistics and traps from the Management Information Base, version 2 (MIB-II) and the Enterprise MIB. It then displays this information on a continuing basis. That is, the Monitor automatically refreshes the display every time it polls the VPN Concentrators in your network.

Who uses it

The Monitor aids enterprise network administrators, service provider system administrators, and field support engineers in system analysis and troubleshooting.

Getting Started

To use the Monitor, you must:

Install it (Chapter 2).
Set system characteristics, defaults, and parameters (Chapter 3).
Add VPN Concentrators to monitor (Chapter 3).
Tell the application what you want to see (Chapter 3).
Display the information you want (Chapter 4).

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