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Where MRTG Fits In


Notes:

VII. MRTG
A. MRTG is not a network management system (NMS).
B. SNMP software falls into five categories:
i. SNMP agents
ii. NMS suites
a) OpenView NNM for mid-to-large business.
b) OpenView ITO for the enterprise
c) Castle Rock costs around $1,300.
d) OpenNMS -- see https://wiki.opennms.org/tiki-view_faq.php?faqId=5#q51
e) Nagios
1. As far as Nagios is concerned, the main difference between it and OpenNMS is that OpenNMS was developed from the beginning to be an enterprise-grade solution capable of monitoring an eventual unlimited number of devices (via a distributed and tiered system).
2. This is even alluded to with respect to SNMP datacollection in the Nagios documentation: “Note: Nagios is not designed to be a replacement for a full-blown SNMP management application like HP OpenView or OpenNMS.”
iii. Element managers (vendor-specific management)
a) “These software packages are geared toward a certain type of vendor or function; for example, an element manager might be a product that focuses on managing a modem rack.” -- Section 5.3 of Essential SNMP.
b) CiscoWorks 2000 allows version control of OS and interactive pictures of the back of the equipment.
iv. Trend-analysis software
a) This is where MRTG falls!
1. http://www.mrtg.org/
2. Started as, and really still is, just a network traffic graphing software. Can use it to graph other values. (CPU usage, available disk space, etc.)
3. Supports UNIX & Windows.
4. Has very good documentation for the initial, standard, setup, but there is little on making it do extra stuff like graphing the CPU usage, and no suggestions to get the user on the right track of the best ways to configure it for different setups. Additionally, documentation on the Perl scripts that actually control the graphing is hard to come by.
5. Have seen on the web that it supports SNMPv3, but have not yet figured out how to do it.
b) Another Open Source product called Cricket.
1. “Some users are successfully using Cricket under Windows NT and/or Windows 2000, but at this time, no one has documented this.” But on its SourceForge site, it says Windows is supported.
2. “Great tool that picks up where MRTG leaves off. It uses RRDTool, the next-generation version of MRTG.” -- Section 5.4 of Essential SNMP.
v. Supporting software
a) Bash shells
b) Perl
c) C