Extreme Networks EPICenter Guide User Manual

EPICenter Overview
EPICenter Concepts and Solutions Guide
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The Remote Monitoring (RMON) MIB
EPICenter can use statistics gathered from the Remote Monitoring (RMON) MIB to provide utilization
statistics on a port-by-port basis, if RMON is supported and enabled on the Extreme devices EPICenter
is managing. Utilization and error statistics can be displayed within the Real-Time Statistics applet,
which provides a number of chart, graph, and tabular display formats. RMON utilization statistics can
also be displayed as end-point annotations on the links between devices on a Topology map. The
EPICenter Alarm Manager also provides the ability to define threshold-based RMON rules for
generating trap events that can be used in EPICenter alarm definitions.
Traps and Smart Traps
Fault detection is based on Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) traps, syslog messages, and
some limited polling. The Alarm System supports SNMP Management Information Base-2 (MIB-2), the
Extreme Networks private MIB, Remote Monitoring (RMON) traps, and selected traps from other MIBs.
The EPICenter software uses a mechanism called SmartTraps to identify changes in Extreme device
configuration.
When an Extreme switch is added to the EPICenter database, the EPICenter software creates a set of
SmartTraps rules that define the configuration change events that the EPICenter server needs to know
about. These rules are downloaded into the Extreme switch, and the EPICenter server is automatically
registered as a trap receiver on the switch. Subsequently, whenever a status or configuration change
takes place, the ExtremeWare software in the switch uses the SmartTraps rules to determine if the
EPICenter server should be notified. These changes can be changes in device status, such as fan failure
or overheating, or configuration changes made on the switch through the ExtremeWare CLI or
ExtremeWare Vista.
For non-Extreme devices, EPICenter does not automatically register itself as a trap receiver; you must
manually configure those devices to send traps to EPICenter. See Appendix B in the EPICenter Reference
Guide for information on configuring devices to send traps to EPICenter.
Device Status Polling
EPICenter uses several types of polling to monitor the status of the devices it manages. Since device
polling adds a certain amount of traffic load to the network, EPICenter tries to minimize the amount of
polling that it does, and many aspects of its polling algorithms are configurable.
EPICenter polls for basic device status approximately every five minutes using SNMP. This poll interval
can be changed in the Administration applet under the Server Properties for SNMP. EPICenter also
polls periodically for detailed device status information. By default, this interval is 30 minutes for
Extreme modular chassis switches, and 90 minutes for Extreme stackable chassis switches. The detailed
polling interval can be set for individual devices through the Inventory Manager feature. The detailed
polling gets more complete information, still only polls for information that has changed; a manual sync
is required to retrieve all information about the device. A sync is performed automatically whenever the
EPICenter client is started.
Telnet Polling
When it is not possible to use SNMP to obtain information from Extreme devices, EPICenter will use
Telnet polling instead. EPICenter uses Telnet polling to obtain MAC address information for edge ports
from a device Forwarding Database (FDB) and to obtain netlogin information. For some old versions of

Extreme Networks EPICenter Guide Specifications

General

Brand	Extreme Networks
Model	EPICenter Guide
Category	Software
Language	English