[KLUG Members] What is this snmp thing all about?

[members@kalamazoolinux.org]

>I think best thing for me is to install one of the SNMP 
>maangers and play.  It appears that MRTG and OpenNMS 
>both look very good.  

Both are very good.  MRTG is a package for creating graphs from accumulated
information.  OpenNMS is a Network Management System.  They differ very much in
scope.

>After a quick review it appears 
>there is going to be allot of setup (Tomcat, and 
>Postgres which I jnow little about) to get OpenNMS up 
>and running.  Although I did see I could douwnload all 
>the RPMS from OpenNMS but it looked pretty confusing on 
>whic RPMS I would want/need being that I have some 
>packages already installed.  

You probably need them all.  There is actually very little setup,  the RPMs do
almost all of it for you.  Avoiding setup is one of the primary goals of an NMS,
 it discovers the devices and starts plotting data for you.  With MRTG you
specify the device, parameters you want to monitor, etc... building a config
file and schuduling periodic polls in cron; OpenNMS make the configuration for
you and has its own internal scheduling mechanism.  I'm not knocking MRTG, we
used to use it here.  But when the network reaches a certain level of complexity
you end up spending ALOT of time holding its hand and guiding it through the
network.

>What do you think would be the best for some just 
>checking out what this SNMP is all about?

I'd start with the snmpwalk utility.  Maybe play around a bit with
tkined+scotty,  it is an elderly package but a good intro to MIB broweseing, etc...

>And a presentation on all this would be great!  When is 
>it? :-)

I'll be yammering about OpenNMS on 2002-11-12.  If we could book a few other
SNMP related talks around that it would be great.