Re: snmp versus /proc

From: Bob Kryger (bkryger_at_gmail.com)
Date: 08/26/05

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To: tim@birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie, For users of Fedora Core releases <fedora-list@redhat.com>

    Timothy Murphy wrote:

    >I've been looking (not very hard) at RRD (round-robin database),
    >and I notice that several examples displaying things like memory usage
    >use snmp (more precisely snmpwalk) to gather the information.
    >
    >I'm just wondering if this still makes sense.
    >Most of the information seems to be available in /proc ,
    >and I wondered if it is just conservatism
    >that leads people to keep on with snmp ?
    >
    >
    >
    You are making the assumption that RRD/MRTG or any other tool doing the
    monitoring would be on the same box you are monitoring. This might make
    sense in some instances but in general you would not want to spend the
    resources needed to do full-fledged monitoring on a box that is supposed
    to be running some calculation, or database or dedicated to some
    user/useful function.

    Along with that you would not be able to (easily) do event correlation
    or comparisons of the data from different systems. Generally you would
    put the network management functions on system that are dedicated to
    that function. Consider a system that becomes unreachable; is it the
    network interface of the system or some other device? How do you handle
    all the events that are generated if you did not centralize the network
    management function?

    I've even seen infrastructures that have a separate network entirely for
    out-of-band network management. This provides (1) a dedicated
    environment so that the NMS (network management system) traffic does not
    interfere with production traffic and (2) a way in to the system should
    there be a catastrophe on the production network. Although I'm not sure
    how common this is any more.

    The issues of memory and disk space are just part of the NMS problem,
    sometimes even secondary. SNMP provides a standard network based
    interface to gather data from disparate systems, too. Think of a Windows
    server that does not have /proc. All you need is the MIB and you can
    monitor it just as you would your Linux box. Same would go for special
    purpose systems like routers, switches, and firewalls.

    Hope this helps.
    bk

    Timothy Murphy wrote:

    >I've been looking (not very hard) at RRD (round-robin database),
    >and I notice that several examples displaying things like memory usage
    >use snmp (more precisely snmpwalk) to gather the information.
    >
    >I'm just wondering if this still makes sense.
    >Most of the information seems to be available in /proc ,
    >and I wondered if it is just conservatism
    >that leads people to keep on with snmp ?
    >
    >
    >
    > 

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