https://net-snmp.sourceforge.io/wiki/index.php?action=history&feed=atom&title=Template%3AFAQ%3AGeneral_15bTemplate:FAQ:General 15b - Revision history2026-04-09T07:33:54ZRevision history for this page on the wikiMediaWiki 1.26.3https://net-snmp.sourceforge.io/wiki/index.php?title=Template:FAQ:General_15b&diff=4029&oldid=prevDts12: Latest FAQ revision - preparing for 5.5 release2009-07-21T08:55:56Z<p>Latest FAQ revision - preparing for 5.5 release</p>
<p><b>New page</b></p><div>There are two main methods of using SNMP for monitoring. One is to regularly<br />
query the SNMP agent for information of interest, graphing these values and/or<br />
saving them for later analysis. That's not really the focus of the Net-SNMP<br />
project - our tools are more low-level, single-shot commands. For this sort<br />
of high-level management, you're really looking at a management console<br />
application (such as [http://www.nagios.org/ Nagios] or [http://www.opennms.org OpenNMS]), or a data logging application<br />
(such as [http://oss.oetiker.ch/rrdtool/ RRDtool], or one of its<br />
front-ends - [http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/ MRTG], [http://www.cacti.net/ Cacti], etc).<br />
<br />
The other approach is to configure the SNMP agent to monitor the relevant<br />
information itself, and issue an alert when the values pass suitable limits.<br />
See the section ACTIVE MONITORING in the snmpd.conf(5) man page for details.<br />
<br />
Note that this entry makes no reference as to ''what'' you should monitor, or<br />
what values might be significant. That's because it is impossible to provide<br />
a universal answer to these questions. The information to monitor, and the<br />
normal operating values will ultimately depend on your local environment.<br />
SNMP is simply a tool to ''help'' you manage your systems - it isn't a magic<br />
panacea - you still have to think for yourself!</div>Dts12