NetX hardware monitoring

NetX can be monitored using standard network protocols, such as SNMP or with other advanced network monitoring systems, such as Zabbix.

SNMP

By default, the SNMP configuration is disabled on the NetX router and it's necessary to configure a community string. Contact or a location can be configured as well, directly from a netc CLI.

Commands

SNMP configuration can be configured in system context using snmp-server command.

snmp-server community

Configure a SNMP server community and enable SNMP daemon.

Syntax

snmp-server community <community-string>

Example
snmp-server community netx-test
Default value

SNMP is disabled by default. No community string is configured.

snmp-server contact

Configure a contact information as reported by SNMP.

Syntax

snmp-server contact <contact-info>

Example
snmp-server contact noc@example.com

snmp-server location

Configure a location of the device as reported by SNMP.

Syntax

snmp-server location <location-info>

Example
snmp-server location "DC Brno"

Configuration example

The following steps describe the basic settings:

  1. Set a community string for SNMP.
netx# system snmp-server community netx-test
  1. Optionally set a contact and location information
netx# system snmp-server location Brno
netx# system snmp-server contact noc@mydomain.com
  1. It should be possible to check if everything is set-up correctly, e.g. using snmpwalk.
netx# shell
[root@netx ~]# snmpwalk -v2c -c netx-test 127.0.0.1 SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0
SNMPv2-MIB::sysDescr.0 = STRING: NetX-cloud: 1.21.3.10.gf7e6f60, NetXOS release 7.8.2003 (Core) 5.4.186-1.7.el7.netx.x86_64

NetX MIB

There are several standard MIB OIDs enabled by default, such as system, hrSystemUptime, ifMIB and interfaces.

Custom NetX properties, such as Control Plane and Data Plane utilization, more precise CPU core load and various traffic-manager values can be queried using NetX MIB with OID .1.3.6.1.4.1.55203. The NetX MIB can be downloaded here or is available at standard location /usr/share/snmp/mibs/.

Zabbix

Zabbix is an open-source software tool to monitor IT infrastructure such as networks, servers, virtual machines, and cloud services. NetX supports monitoring and integration with Zabbix and it's possible to configure an integration with Zabbix directly in netc CLI. By default, NetX uses Zabbix Active agent with a custom template for monitoring custom properties.

Commands

Zabbix server can be configured in system context using zabbix command.

zabbix hostname

Configure a unique, case sensitive hostname. Required for active checks and must match hostname as configured on the Zabbix server.

Syntax

zabbix hostname <hostname>

Example
zabbix hostname rt.lab.netx.as

zabbix server

Configure a case sensitive hostname of Zabbix server or Zabbix proxy. It is possible to configure several zabbix servers to export statistics to multiple servers or proxies.

Syntax

zabbix server <domain-name|ip>

Example

The following example exports data to both servers zabbix1 and zabbix2.

zabbix server zabbix1.netx.as
zabbix server zabbix2.netx.as

Zabbix templates

The following Zabbix templates are available for NetX and allow to monitor different NetX properties.

  • NetX Base template: The basic NetX Zabbix template that monitors several HW stats, such as Control Plane/Data Plane loads, network interfaces bps/pps statistics, etc.
  • NetX Bird template: The NetX Bird template automatically discovers BGP peers monitor their status and number of exported/imported routes. If a BGP peer is down a trigger is reported.
  • NetX NetFlow template: Monitors NetFlow statits, such as number of flows in NetFlow cache, total number of bytes, etc.
  • NetX QoS stats template: Autodiscovers all QoS shaping rules. Does not monitor bps/pps per rule by default, as there could be large number of rules. Monitoring of each group can be handled by zabbix-qos script that use zabbix-sender.
Warning

There could be a large number of Zabbix items for QoS rules. Each QoS rule (a customer) creates three zabbix items by default. E.g., 5k customers creates 15k zabbix items are created. It's recommanded to use the zabbix-qos script that pushes the data using zabbix-sender as standard zabbix-agent, either passive or active, cannot handle this large amount of updates per second.