August 2008
Intermediate to advanced
458 pages
12h 47m
English
Content preview from Python for Unix and Linux System AdministrationBecome an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 7. SNMP
Introduction
SNMP can change your life as a sysadmin. The rewards of using SNMP are not as instantaneous as writing a few lines of Python to parse a logfile, for example, but when an SNMP infrastructure has been setup, it is amazing to work with.
In this chapter, we will be covering these aspects of SNMP: autodiscovery, polling/monitoring, writing agents, device control, and finally enterprise SNMP integration. Of course, all of these things are going to be done with Python.
If you are unfamiliar with SNMP or need to brush up on SNMP, we highly recommend reading Essential SNMP by Douglas Mauro and Kevin Schmidt (O’Reilly), or at least keeping it handy. A good SNMP reference book is essential to truly understanding SNMP and what it can do. We will go over a few of the basics of SNMP in the next section, but going into much detail is beyond the scope of this book. In fact, there is more than enough material for a complete book on using Python with SNMP.
Brief Introduction to SNMP
SNMP Overview
The 10,000 foot view of SNMP is that it is a protocol for managing devices on an IP network. Typically, this is done via UDP ports 161 and 162, although it is possible, but rare, to use TCP as well. Just about any modern device in a data center supports SNMP; this means it is possible to manage not only switches and routers, but servers, printers, UPSs, storage, and more.
The basic use for SNMP is to send UDP packets to hosts and to wait for a response. This is how monitoring of devices ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access
More than 5,000 organizations count on O’Reilly
O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.Julian F.
I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.Addison B.
I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.Amir M.
I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.