Because configuration of SNMP tags
implies a lot of parameters, we provide
people a plug-in in our System Management Tools to do so.
In the System Management Tools
you can find it under the Points category.
It is called the PI SNMP Tag
Configurator. Now,
let's take a look at the three tabs composing this plug-in.
The first tab is the
PI side of it. This is where we ask
people for details on how to configure the tags.
The PointSource, the Interface ID number,
the Scan Class to use
to query SNMP agent, and some more details about the
counters. Just like in the Perfermon's
Monitor Plug-In, you can see a list here
where you choose the interface you want to use.
When interfaces are configured in ICU,
you will see them in the list, and just
the simple fact of choosing them will automatically set the,
the PointSource, the Location1, and will give you a
nice list for the Scan Classes. When you
do not have interfaces configured in ICU,
you will have to set the PointSource, the Interface ID number
as well as the Scan Class, manually.
Now remember when I talked to you about
configuring the interface. I told you you can
omit the Community String, you can omit the password
in the tag's configuration. You could tell the interface
to go and read the password in the Password File.
Now, when configuring tags,
to tell the tags not to contain
the password, you simply check that check-box.
Checking this assumes you have
checked the option in ICU.
So the interface right away knows that it has to go in the
Password File. I also told you you
can regroup tags together. As you can
see, if you check that check-box, you will
group the tags that are similar in sets of how many
tags you configured in ICU.
So this is for the first tab, the Tag Settings.
The second tab is
not even related to PI. It's the SNMP
Settings where you can simply
determine an, an alias for your device,
it's Host Name or IP Address, the
Read Community String, and the Write Community String.
Something interesting you can do is to
save these settings to a file. These files
are called Agent Files.
With this button here, you can open
Agent Files which will list the device
that are in. You can choose one.
You will see the information here, and
you are then ready to query the SNMP agent on the device.
The first thing you should do
is to either validate the
communication with the device or get
interface info. What we mean here by interface
is a network interface,
a physical or logical port.
As you can see when I click Get Interface
Info on my local host, I got
two interfaces. One
is my Microsoft TCP
Loopback Interface. This is a software interface
automatically built in Windows machines.
And I also got my 3Com
Network Interface. In summary,
the second tab is simply where you tell the plug-in
what device to communicate with.
And the third tab is where you choose the
OIDs, where you choose the counters to monitor on your
device. You will see a hierarchy,
the SNMP Hierarchy, in which you
simply check entries you want to monitor
on your device. To validate that these can
be monitored on the selected device,
after checking them you choose Move to the
List button. They will be pasted in the right-hand
pane after Validation.
Because you have to know that not all the devices will support
all the counters. Here I would like to take a
second to insist on the hierarchy you see.
See, ISO
or DOD,
Management, [inaudible] to,
Interfaces. This is one of the most popular
categories in the SNMP Hierarchy.
This is where you see information about all the
physical or logical network interfaces on a
device. And see here is something special in
SNMP. This is something we call a
Table, an SNMP Table. That means
for every single entry in the
Table, you will have access to all these
parameters. Let's take a switch, a network
undefined
let's say 128 ports.
These ports are all part of the Table
IF, Interface Table. For every
single port on the switch you would have the
description of the port, the type of the port, the
speed of the port, and so on; bytes in, bytes
out, errors in, errors out, and so on.
Before to go further, let
me recap something I told you in my introduction on
SNMP. I told you counters in
SNMP agents are called OIDs, Object
IDentifiers, and they can be identified
by either their numerical notation or
textual notation. That means every
single entry here in this hierarchy
is, in fact, a number.
Another concept I told you about is
the MIB File, the Management Information Base,
which is a text file built
for aliasing purposes. This is the file
associating text with numbers.
So, as you can see here, when
you query the agent, you will query it for
interfaces .iftable .if
entry .ifdescr
.3 for port number 3.
But, in fact, in the SNMP agent
you say something like 2.14
.1.something else, that's some other number.
But this is all done by our
plug-in. Another interesting
feature of our plug-in is the templates.
You can use templates just like in the
plug-in to configure Performance Monitor Tags.
You right-click anywhere in the hierarchy,
and you choose Load OID Template.
This would allow you to load a template,
either an OSIsoft template or a custom template
you built. You probably remember that
once the template have been chosen, the entries
that are included in the template are marked in red.
So then you can add some more.
But, when you are ready, you can right-click again
anywhere in the hierarchy and then check
all template entries. The result
of this operation would be to check all the entries marked
in red.. And remember,
that to create your own templates,
it's again done via the right-click menu.
When you selected all
the counters to create, you can then review them or
edit them by right-clicking on one
or more of them, then choosing Properties
and accessing the Properties window.
When you are ready, you can simply
choose a server, a PI Server, and
create the tags to the server, or write
the tags' configuration to a CSV file,
a Comma Separated Values
file. So you can then review it in Excel
and create it whenever you want.