HP Network Node Manager 9: Getting Started Manage your network effectively with NNMi Marius Vilemaitis professional expertise distilled P U B L I S H I N G BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI HP Network Node Manager 9: Getting Started Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: January 2011 Production Reference: 1201210 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-849680-84-4 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Dan Anderson ([email protected]) Credits Author Editorial Team Leader Marius Vilemaitis Gagandeep Singh Reviewers Project Team Leader Lance Ecklesdafer Priya Mukherji Eran Maor Project Coordinator Srimoyee Ghoshal Acquisition Editor Amey Kanse Proofreaders Kelly Hutchison Development Editors Dhiraj Chandiramani Samantha Lyon Hyacintha D'Souza Graphics Geetanjali Sawant Technical Editors Gaurav Datar Erika Fernandes Production Coordinators Shantanu Zagade Arvindkumar Gupta Copy Editors Neha Damle Leonard D'Silva Cover Work Shantanu Zagade Janki Mathuria Indexer Rekha Nair About the Author Marius Vilemaitis is an implementation and integration professional with 10 years of experience in IT infrastructure monitoring tools. He has worked in various roles during this period, including System Administrator, Analyst, Engineer, and Implementation and Integration Consultant. Marius has worked in projects for mid-and large-size companies from various industries such as internet service providers, telecom companies and mobile operators, government departments and agencies, electrical and retail chain companies, among others. Marius has accomplished stunning results during his role in the designing and testing of Customs Management Systems (CMS), as well as leading a team of developers to accomplish the designing tasks. Here is what he has to say about his experience with IT infrastructure monitoring tools: The IT infrastructure monitoring is just about switching between red and green light. All that you need for your success is to find the magic moment to trigger a right color indicator at the right place. And this is the moment when you recognize that the most complicated and challenging thing is to have a right team, whichever stage you are in— development, implementation, or operations. Marius also provides training in IT infrastructure monitoring and management tools, which includes network, server, application, and premises monitoring, as well as configuration management. This book wouldn't have been published without the help of many people, who contributed ideas and helped find solutions. It would be hard to list all of the names, but these people are my co-workers, partners, customers, and friends; all of them are part of this book. All these people are the source of my experience as well. A special thanks to my family for infinitive support and living all these days without seeing their husband and dad. This book wouldn't have happened without you. About the Reviewer Lance Ecklesdafer is a Cisco certified Network Associate and experienced Microsoft Professional with more than 25 years of experience in Information Technology. He has experience in designing, planning, installing, managing, and supporting small to enterprise level networks and computer systems. He also has experience in designing, implementing, managing, and troubleshooting client networks, security solutions, and system applications. During his career in IT, Lance has provided leadership to help select technology direction along with supplier and network services for Fortune 100 companies. He has participated not only in day-to-day operations, but also in project work. Any moves, changes, or adds of equipment was under his responsibility to not only design and plan, but also to implement at client's location. He also has experience in designing and building of midrange hosting environments. Lance has extensive network monitoring background, which includes HP Openview Operations, Network Node Manager, Nagios Groundwork, Cacti, and WhatsUp Gold Professional, just to name a few. With the help of these tools, he has been able to provide information related to performance issues, incident and problem management, and root cause analysis. Lance lives in Grand Blanc, Michigan, with his wife of 15 years, Christine. Besides Information Technology, Lance also studies Archaeology, Egyptology, and Archaeoastronomy. www.PacktPub.com Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book. Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub. com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at [email protected] for more details. At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks. http://PacktLib.PacktPub.com Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. 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Table of Contents Preface 1 Chapter 1: Before we Manage with NNMi 7 What can HP SW NNMi do for us? 8 Choosing the right edition 12 Understanding Smart Plug-ins (iSPI) 14 iSPI for Performance 15 iSPI Performance for Metrics 15 iSPI Performance for Traffic 18 iSPI Network Engineering toolset 21 iSPI diagnostics 21 Troubleshooting tools 22 Trap analytics 22 iSPI IP Telephony 23 iSPI for MPLS 25 iSPI multicast 27 Server sizing considerations 29 How NNMi will impact my infrastructure 31 Traffic consumption by the monitoring tool 31 Security policy changes in your infrastructure 32 Data storage space for system backups 32 Infrastructure device naming convention 32 Licensing policy 33 Installing software 34 Prerequisite check 35 Installation process 35 Post installation tasks 38 Summary 39 Table of Contents Chapter 2: Discovering and Monitoring Your Network 41 Discovery in NNMi 41 How discovery works 42 Configuring communication protocols 47 What is a communication in NNMi? 48 What is the role of ICMP in NNMi? 48 What is the role of SNMP in NNMi? 49 How NNMi deals with overlapping SNMP community configuration 51 Best practices when configuring SNMP communities 51 Configuring SNMP community names in NNMi 52 Boosting up discovery with seeds 58 What are seeds? 58 How can discovery be boosted with seeds? 58 How to load seeds in NNMi 60 Limiting discovery with filters 62 What are discovery filters? 62 Why do we need discovery filters? 63 Filter configuration example 64 Examining discovery results 64 Stopping/starting managing of nodes, cards, or interfaces 70 What is a stop managing object? 70 Why we need to change the management mode? 71 How does it work? 71 Management mode change examples 74 Discovery examples 76 Example 1: Seed module 76 Example 2: Discover by IP address range and system Object ID 77 Rediscovering your network from scratch 79 State poller 80 What is state poller? 80 How does it work? 80 How to plan state polling 81 Example 84 Summary 88 Chapter 3: Configuring and Viewing Maps 89 Node groups 90 What are node groups? 90 Configuring node groups 91 Node group configuration example 95 [ ii ] Table of Contents Node group map configuration 99 What is node group map? 100 Configuring node group maps 101 Creating node groups in the command line 107 Viewing maps 108 Interface groups 111 Configuring interface groups 112 Path View map configuration 115 What is Path View? 115 Configuring Path View 116 Custom Path View—an example 117 User interface configuration 119 Web browser settings 120 Configuring Mozilla Firefox to open a new tab 121 Configuring Internet Explorer to open a new tab 122 Configuring Internet Explorer title bar 124 Symbols 124 Summary 127 Chapter 4: Configuring Incidents 129 Introduction to incidents 130 How incidents enter a system 136 Configuring NNMi forwarding SNMP traps 137 Configuring SNMP trap incidents 141 Checking whether NNMi is receiving SNMP traps 147 Controlling the number of incoming SNMP traps 152 Configuring management events 155 Configuring NNM 6.x/7.x events 156 Tuning incidents 158 Pairwise 159 Deduplication 161 Rate 164 Interface settings 166 Node settings 169 Suppression 171 Enrichment 172 Dampening 175 Configuring automatic actions 176 Summary 178 [ iii ]