SNMP Assets and OIDS

[KB-Team]

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) will allow you to manually add assets via IP, manually add OIDs to monitor, and alert when the desired thresholds are breached. You will need to know the IP of the address of the network device you wish to monitor as well as the specific OID(s) and the value type of those OIDs.

Table of Contents

General Overview
Adding a New SNMP Asset
Enabling SNMP on an Existing Asset
Creating an OID Monitor
Monitored Object Identifiers (OIDS)
OID Monitor Recipes
Editing an Existing Recipe
OID Recipe Sharing
Troubleshooting

 

General Overview

To get started, head to the Assets & RMM tab. Your SNMP assets will be listed with your main assets page, but you can set the SNMP Enabled filter to True and click Search to view only SNMP assets.

To the upper left of the assets list you can click the Customize button to include SNMP columns. Click any blue column header to sort by that property.

 

Adding a New SNMP Asset

These steps assume you want to add a user created device. If you want to add a Syncro device, follow the steps in that article link.

1. Head to the Assets & RMM page.
2. In the upper right, click New Asset.
   
3. On the New Asset screen, click Create Asset Manually.
4. In the right hand CREATE ASSET MANUALLY section, click the Asset Type dropdown and select the asset type.
   
5. Select the Asset Type. If the type you want does not exist, click Modify Asset Types to add one, then return here when finished to select it.
   
6. Enter and select the Customer name it belongs to.
7. Fill out any additional details.
8. Click Create Asset.
9. The asset's details page will appear.
   

Once the device has been created, it will look like a standard manual asset. Proceed to the next set of steps, starting with step 2.

Enabling SNMP on an Existing Asset

1. If you are not already on the screen below, go to the Assets & RMM page and click the desired asset to open it.
2. In the upper right, click Edit.
   
3. Next, click the SNMP Details tab.
   
4. Check the SNMP Enabled box.
5. Enter the SNMP information.
   Hostname / IP: This is the hostname or IP address of the network asset.
   Port: This is the port the SNMP asset listens on for SNMP-related traffic. This defaults to port 161.
   Monitoring Agent: Allows you to choose from a list of the customer's Syncro devices that will act as the polling apparatus for this network asset, monitoring the desired OIDs. The green circle indicates that the asset is online.
   SNMP Version: This notes which SNMP version the network asset is operating under—v1 or v2.
   Community: Allows you to adjust the security parameters for the SNMP Community string to allow access to the device.
6. If you want to be alerted if the device went offline, enter the maximum number of minutes it can no longer talk to the Monitoring Agent before it sends an alert. You can check the Auto-resolve alert when clear box to automatically dismiss the alert. Note that if the Monitoring Agent goes offline, it will not trigger the alert. The monitoring device must be online for the offline alert to trigger.
7. Follow the next set of steps if you want to add an OID monitor.
8. Once the asset information has been filled out, click Save Changes to save the details.
9. When you return to the asset detail page, you will now see Overview and Monitoring tabs, along with a section for Monitored Object Identifiers (OIDS).
   

 

Adding an OID Monitor

You can add OIDs on a one-off basis to an SNMP asset. If using a Custom OID Monitor, any OIDs added here would need to be manually added into any other SNMP asset if you wish to monitor them on other assets.

Click Add Custom Monitor to create a new OID Monitor.

Monitor Name: The friendly name given to the OID for easier identification
Unit Name (optional): The name of the unit being monitored
Object Identifier (OID): The actual OID (e.g. “.1.3.6.1.2.1.43.11.1.1.9.1.1”)
Value Type: This defines the type of value the OID will return (string or number).
Threshold Modifier: This field conditionally populates based on what the Value Type is set to (ex: equal to, does not equal, contains, does not contain, etc.)
Threshold Value: This is the value that will check the polled results after applying the threshold modifier.
Threshold Duration: The threshold must be breached for this duration before alerting. Monitors are checked every 60 seconds.
Duration Units: The unit of time specified in the threshold duration (minutes, hours days).
Append Custom Message to Alert Body: Allows you to add a custom message to the body of the alert
Auto-resolve alert when clear: Automatically clears the alert once it has been resolved

NOTE: If the monitoring device is offline, it will not trigger any OID monitoring alerts on any attached SNMP Assets.

 

OID Status Indicator

When the OID is found, you will see a green checkmark. If you hover over the checkmark, you will see the value that is present:

When the OID is found, but no value is present, you will see a red exclamation point.

 

Adding an OID Recipe to the Asset

Alternatively, you can add an OID recipe to the SNMP device based on the SNMP device type that is set. An OID recipe is a group of OID monitors that can be applied to all different kinds of SNMP assets of the same asset type.

 

When you return to the asset detail page, you will now see a section for Monitored Object Identifiers (OIDS).

 

Monitored Object Identifiers (OIDS)

This section will show each OID being monitored for the network device. The refresh button will trigger a recheck of the displayed OID values:

On the far left of the table, you will see a status indicator. A green checkmark means the status is within the limits of the threshold. A red exclamation means it has exceeded the limits of the threshold.

Next, you will see the OID's friendly name, the last polled value, and the unit type if applicable. The last column will denote the threshold given to the OID in order to throw an alert.

 

Monitoring Tab

The monitoring tab will let you see all RMM alerts that have been generated from the OIDs for the SNMP asset. You can choose to view the alert, create a ticket, or mute the alert:

 

OID Monitor Recipes

To view your OID Recipes head to the Assets & RMM main page and click View > OID Recipes.

From the OID Monitor Recipes page you can create a new recipe or edit, clone, generate a public link or delete a recipe.

 

Creating a New OID Monitor Recipe

On the OID Monitor Recipes page, click the New OID Monitor Recipe button.

Give the OID Recipe a name and select the Asset Type to determine the type of asset the recipe is for. (Note: Only Asset Types that are the same as the recipe will be available to the use on an SNMP Asset).

Then you can add multiple monitors to the recipe and added custom messages to the alert body. Once all the monitors have been added, click Create OID Recipe to save the recipe to apply to SNMP assets.

 

Editing an Existing Recipe

From the edit page, you can view the assets that have the recipe applied, edit or delete monitors, and add new monitors to the recipe.

When saving changes, you will have two options:

Save Changes: This will save the changes and apply them when adding this OID Recipe to any new network device, but will not override settings for any devices already using it.

Save changes and Apply to Existing Devices: This will save the changes, and then override any network device that currently utilizes this recipe with the updated values.

 

OID Recipe Sharing

On the OID Recipes list page, when you click the “three-dot menu” > Generate Public Link, you can generate a public link to share with other Syncro users.

When a recipe has been shared, you will see the option to directly click to the public link in a new tab or to copy the public link to your clipboard:

These links can be used to share recipes with other Syncro users.

 

Troubleshooting

I can't get any OID monitors to work when adding them to an SNMP device.
If you can't get any OID monitors to work, try using SNMP walk to make sure the monitoring device can reach the SNMP device via the hostname/IP supplied.