How-to alert on and graph Cisco interface error rates & discard rates in Opsview

To configure the rate of discards and/or rate of errors monitoring

Requires: Community version 3.7.2 or enterprise version 3.8

1. From the top menu select “CONFIGURATION” -> “Hosts”
2. Click on the desired host.
3.  Select the “SNMP” tab.
4. Click on the “Submit and Edit Host Interfaces” button.
5. Click on the “Query Host” link.
6. Click on the “Interface to poll” checkbox to select all interfaces or individually check the box next to the desired interface(s).  You don’t need to enter the Warning/Critical threshold for each interface, if left blank it will use the “Default thresholds” listed in the 1st row.
7. Click the “Submit” button.
8. Click on the desired host again.
9. Click the “Monitors” tab.
10. Expand the “SNMP-Traps” section.
11. Check the “Discards” and/or “Errors” checkboxes.
12. Click on the “Submit” button.

To view the results

1. The new settings will not take effect until you reload the configuration….
   1. Click on the “Configuration status” link at the top of the page.
   2. Click on the “Reload Configuration” button and wait until it displays “Opsview is running”.
2. Select “STATUS” -> “Host Group Summary”
3. Click on the Host Group where the host is located.
4. Click on the desired host.
5. You should see the “Discards” and/or “Errors” services.  Wait a few minutes and you should start seeing data and performance graph icons.

Comments

This is an awesome and extremely useful feature!  Prior to this release of Opsview we had written our own interface error checks, and I can tell your from experience that this new integrated feature is much cleaner.  To able to query the interfaces for each device straight from Opsview and then configure the interfaces from a nice grid is miles better than creating row after row of service checks one to handle each numbered interface and then individually checking the list of interface service checkboxes for each device.

Python Cmd module in Cisco IOS-style

Everything except argument processing is complete and tested in this version.  A new version that supports IOS-style arg processing is currently undergoing testing; it will be available in the very near future.

RANCID – Ubuntu How-to – Installation, device bulk imports & SSH setup

Reference: Official RANCID Website

Would you rather manually hand-enter all your network devices into each individual RANCID group configuration file?  Or how about bulk loading them from CSV file, spreadsheet or otherwise using a Bash script and a little Python magic?

VLAN Design Strategies – One-VLAN-per-Switch

Disclaimer

This post only discusses end-user switch VLAN’s, not core infrastructure VLAN’s, and not management VLAN’s.  We have special VLAN’s assigned based on jack physical-location/data-sensitivity security assessments, but those are also outside the scope of this post.   I am also not recommending the one-VLAN-per-switch design  as a best practice for Cisco switches, just sharing with you what works in our environment.  I am interested in comments from other network professionals.

Why would anyone want to go to the trouble of one VLAN-per-switch?

We have found it very beneficial when receiving  alerts from IPS’s , security log event monitors, other security software, centralized anti-virus/malware monitors, and when analyzing the centralized logs.  Just by looking at the IP address we can tell immediately where an issue is coming from and respond to it quickly.  When correlating events, it also helps us visualize patterns of activity.  

 

Cisco favors H.323 over MGCP

Cisco officially stated that they are focusing their development efforts on H.323 as opposed to MGCP. Cisco text books still favor MGCP, but H.323 appears to be the future.

Cisco Smartport Macro Feature

If you aren’t using macros on your newer Cisco switches, why not?  Macros are great for ensuring consistency when configuring switch ports, and as you probably already know consistency is one of the critical elements to good security.  If you’re not using macros then hopefully you have your own templates that you open up in a text editor and paste in.  The nice thing about the macros versus the text editor method is that the macros are already available right on the devices themselves.  Cisco includes a handful of preconfigured macros which are worth looking at, but you’ll want to create your own and roll them out to your devices in batch.

An example of configuring a Cisco switch with a macro:

config t
int range g0/1 - 48
macro apply cisco-phone $access_vlan <data vlan> $voice_vlan <voice vlan>

Note: A common beginner mistake is to forget to pad the dash with spaces on the range command.

Pre-defined macros:

sho parser macro brief

default global : cisco-global
default interface: cisco-desktop
default interface: cisco-phone
default interface: cisco-switch
default interface: cisco-router
default interface: cisco-wireless

For further information visit

http://bit.ly/9aBgqO