Version

Argent Advanced Technology 3.1A-1407-A

Date

Tuesday, 8 July 2014

Summary

Customer now can use the new Device Magic product to monitor switches without dealing with individual explicit MIBs and OIDs

Device Magic monitors the following for switch host as well as individual ports:

1. Up/Down Status
2. In/Out Bandwidth Usage (MBPS)
3. Packet Latency and Packet Loss

Multiple thresholds can be defined for different Event Priority and Console Comments

The higher priority Events will be fired even the same Event with lower priority has not been answered or resolved

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Device Magic can display the Device Port Status in real time using the captured information

Offline Ports and Switches are displayed as red dot

Online Switch with one or more Offline Ports is displayed as orange dot

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Technical Background

In the Device Magic product, the option ‘Send Individual Alerts For Each Port Offline‘ controls whether separate Event should be fired for individual port

The difference lies in how Auto Correction is handled and the number of Events sent to the Argent Console

When a separate Event is fired for an individual down port, the Event can be automatically corrected for just that individual down port

For example, when port#7 and port#8 are both down, two Events are fired, one for each down port; when port#8 is back up, Event for port#8 can be automatically resolved, but Event for port#7 stays unanswered because port#7 is still down

If the Event is fired for the switch as a whole, the Event is automatically corrected only after both the down ports are back up

Take the same scenario in previous example, just one Event is fired for both down ports; when port#8 is back up, the single Event stays unanswered until port#7 is also back up

Customers will typically need both options — in some cases individual ports need be monitored, while in other cases some switches need to be treated as whole

The benefit of firing Event for the whole switch is that Argent Console is not flooded with Alerts

Typically office switches do not have more than 32 ports

However, increasingly, switches used in ISPs can have hundreds of ports

Firing an Event for each individual down port can cause hundreds of Alerts to be generated in the Argent Console — and this is just for a single network device

Argent’s Device Magic product uses a registry key to determine the maximum port count when the feature is forcibly disabled

The registry (DWORD) is

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Argent\ARGENT_FOR_SNMP\ PORT_COUNT_TO_FORCE_COMBINED_EVENTS

The default value is 32

The limit is turned off if the value is set to be zero

Resolution

Upgrade to Argent Advanced Technology 3.1A-1407-A or later