Essential SNMP, 2nd Edition

Using NNM for Communications

One of the more exotic ways to use SNMP is as a tool for passing messages back and forth. For example, it's certainly useful to know that the Oracle database has gone down, but it's even more useful to send messages to key users notifying them that the database has crashed or that it's going down for maintenance at the end of the day. In a small environment, it's easy to come up with hacks that provide various kinds of notification. But in a large company with many offices, it's useful to have a standard way for communicating with other departments. NNM's Event Categories is the perfect tool to use as a centralized communication device.

Imagine a web interface that allows you to send traps to Event Categories. Filling out a simple form in a browser automatically generates a trap that is posted to the appropriate categories. Figure B-3 shows such an interface.

What types of questions does everyone (you, managers, users, etc.) ask when there's a problem? The most typical ones are:

Who is in charge?

Name, phone, pager

What is going on?

Reboot, upgrade, failure

What servers are affected?

Production, test, development

What services are affected?

Mail, news, database, web server

When did this happen?

e.g., 10 minutes ago, 4 days from now

Figure B-3. SNMP web interface

When will this be fixed?

e.g., immediately, tomorrow

What is the severity?

Normal, Warning, ...