SNMP Network Managers

An SNMP Network Manager is a program that asks for information from master agents and displays that information. Most SNMP Network Managers let you select the items to monitor and the form in which to display the information. An SNMP Network Manager typically provides the following features:

• Remote monitoring of managed components
• Low-impact sampling of the performance of a managed component
• Correlation of managed component metrics with related system and network metrics
• Graphical presentation of information

Many hardware and network services have created SNMP Network Managers. For example:

• CA-Unicenter
• Hewlett-Packard Open View
• IBM Netview/6000
• Novell Network Management System
• Sun Solstice
• Tivoli TME 10 NetView

SNMP Network Managers use a connectionless protocol, which means that each exchange between an SNMP Network Manager and a master agent is a separate transaction. A connectionless protocol allows the SNMP Network Manager to perform the following actions:

• Gather information without putting an excessive load on the network
• Function in an environment where heavy traffic can cause network problems

Most SNMP Network Managers provide a graphical user interface (GUI) such as the one that Figure 2 illustrates. With this SNMP Network Manager, you select a node to monitor and then choose specific information from a menu.

Figure 2. SNMP Network Manager Example

Figure 3 shows how an SNMP Network Manager might display information about the databases on a network. In this example, the network has only one database.

Feb 17 1999 [ smoke ] : RDBMS-MIB.rdbmsDbTable
KEY = 72000003
rdbmsDbName = CustomerData
rdbmsDbName.72000003 = AnotherData
rdbmsDbPrivateMibOID = 1.3.6.1.4.1.893
rdbmsDbVendorName = IBM Corporation
rdbmsDbName = CustomerData
rdbmsDbContact = John Doe

Figure 4 shows how a different SNMP Network Manager could display the same information.

rdbmsDbPrivateMibOID.72000003 = 1.3.6.1.4.1.893
rdbmsDbVendorName.72000003 = IBM Corporation
rdbmsDbName.72000003 = CustomerData
rdbmsDbContact.72000003 = John Doe

In addition to text, an SNMP Network Manager might also display graphs or charts, as Figure 5 illustrates.

Figure 5. Example of Monitoring Information