Essential SNMP

Chapter 6. Configuring Your NMS

Now that you have picked out some software to use in your environment, it’s time to talk about installing and running it. In this chapter we will look at a few NMS packages in detail. While we listed several packages in Chapter 5, we will dig into only a few packages here, and we’ll use these packages in examples throughout the rest of the book. These examples should allow you to get most other SNMP-based network-management packages up and running with very little effort.

HP’s OpenView Network Node Manager

Network Node Manager (NNM) is a licensed software product. The package includes a feature called “Instant-On” that allows you to use the product for a limited time (60 days) while you are waiting for your real license to arrive. During this period, you are restricted to a 250-managed-node license, but the product’s capabilities aren’t limited in any other way. When you install the product, the Instant-On license is enabled by default.

Tip

Check out the OpenView scripts located in OpenView’s bin directory (normally /opt/OV/bin). One particularly important group of scripts sets environment variables that allow you to traverse OpenView’s directory structure much more easily. These scripts are named ov.envvars.csh, ov.envvars.sh, etc. (that is, ov.envvars followed by the name of the shell you’re using). When you run the appropriate script for your shell, it defines environment variables such as $OV_BIN, $OV_MAN, and $OV_TMP, which point to ...