FAQ:General 16

How can I monitor my system with SNMP?

There are two main methods of using SNMP for monitoring. One is to regularly query the SNMP agent for information of interest, graphing these values and/or saving them for later analysis. That's not really the focus of the Net-SNMP project - our tools are more low-level, single-shot commands. For this sort of high-level management, you're really looking at a management console application (such as Nagios or OpenNMS), or a data logging application (such as RRDtool, or one of its front-ends - MRTG, Cacti, etc).

The other approach is to configure the SNMP agent to monitor the relevant information itself, and issue an alert when the values pass suitable limits. See the section ACTIVE MONITORING in the snmpd.conf(5) man page for details.

Note that this entry makes no reference as to what you should monitor, or what values might be significant. That's because it is impossible to provide a universal answer to these questions. The information to monitor, and the normal operating values will ultimately depend on your local environment. SNMP is simply a tool to help you manage your systems - it isn't a magic panacea - you still have to think for yourself!

   FAQ:General
   

1. What is it?
2. Where can I get it?
3. What documentation is available?
4. Are there binaries available?
5. What's the difference between UCD-SNMP and Net-SNMP?
6. What operating systems does it run on?
7. What happens if mine isn't listed?
8. Does it run on Windows?
9. How do I find out about new releases?
10. How can I find out what other people are doing?
11. How do I submit a patch or bug report?
12. Can I reuse the code in my commercial application?
13. What's the difference between SNMPv1, SNMPv2 and SNMPv3?
    What's the difference between SNMPv2 and SNMPv2c?
14. Which versions of SNMP are supported in this package?
15. Can I use SNMPv1 requests with an SNMPv2 MIB (or vice versa)?
16. How can I monitor my system with SNMP?
17. Where can I find more information about network management?
18. What ports does SNMP use?
19. Is Net-SNMP thread safe?