Table of Contents

Building a Monitoring Template

Saied Ahadi Updated by Saied Ahadi

Read Time: 4 mins

What is a monitoring template:

A monitoring template in Sonar is a template that can be applied to specific device models or deployment types to monitor them.

Creating your monitoring template

Monitoring Template creation occurs in multiple stages upon accessing the Settings page and clicking on the Create button:

  1. Name: The name of the monitoring template. The name should describe what kind of device you will monitor.
  2. Collecting Interface Statistics: Having this box checked will gather specific stats for this device. For example, it will try to get all the MAC addresses associated with this device and certain stats like the speeds or throughput for each port.
  1. ICMP Monitoring: When ICMP monitoring is enabled, you can define the latency threshold and packet loss threshold. If any of above conditions are met or exceeded, the device is considered down in Sonar.

  1. SNMP Monitoring: SNMP monitoring allows for better monitoring of your devices. When SNMP monitoring is enabled, you need to define the version supported by your device, and also the community string. A community string functions like a password.
    1. Version 1: The oldest SNMP version available. All devices supports this version although it is not the most secure and should not be used if version 2c or 3 is available. Note: all Ubiquiti devices support v1 only.
    2. Version 2c: Version 2 is the most popular version being used and it support 64 bit counters.
    3. Version 3: is the newest and most secure version of SNMP. It is important to note that not all devices support V3.

Editing your monitoring template

Once you've created your monitoring template, you can then edit the information and settings associated with it by clicking "Edit" on the corresponding line item. A new page will populate with the following tabs:

  1. General Settings allow you to rename the template if you wish and enable "Collect interface statistics for devices associated with this template".
  2. Inventory Models allow you to add inventory models that will be targeted for monitoring by that specific template. It is recommended to only monitor one manufacturer per template, as mixing manufacturers will make selecting the OIDs more difficult.
  3. Deployment Types allow you to add further filtering to your monitoring template, allowing you to monitor specific deployments of the previously selected inventory models.
  4. SNMP Settings allow you to adjust the SNMP settings used when initially creating the monitoring template.
  5. SNMP Graphs provide access to creating an SNMP graph for your monitoring template, which we'll touch on further below.

Creating a SNMP graph

When you create a SNMP graph, you can specify one or multiple OIDs to be graphed. Generally, it is recommended to input and graph OIDs that match a certain criteria (example transfer rate, power, etcetera.)

When you create a graph you are given three options on how the graph will be displayed.

Area Graph:

Bar Graph:

Line Graph:

If you'd like to customize your templates but need a hand finding the OIDs, take a look at our Finding your OIDs article

Customizing your graphs

Once you have the correct OID, back in Sonar Monitoring Graphs, click on Edit SNMP OID. Then type a SNMP OID name and OID copied from the Ireasoning MIB browser. In here you can specify if you want the info to be displayed as a table rather than a graph, and specify if there is a unit of measurement (for example download or upload speed kb/s). If you wanted this info to converted to something else, you can define the unit of measurement and what number to divide it by. Lastly you will choose what color the graph will be displayed.

Viewing your SNMP / ICMP Results

Once you've configured a Monitoring Template and a Poller, the results will be viewable via a few different locations:

  1. From Inventory > Inventory Items and by clicking on the arrow relating to the selected line item. This will populate a sidebar reflecting historical graphs of the ICMP and SNMP information.
  2. From Network > Dashboard and by clicking on the arrow relating to the selected line item. This will also populate a sidebar reflecting historical graphs of the ICMP and SNMP information.
  3. When viewing a customer's account, navigate to Network & Inventory > Inventory Items and click on the arrow relating to the inventory item you wish to view further. Once again, this will populate the same sidebar as the other two methods.
  4. Each serviceable address has access to this information too by selecting Inventory Items and opening the same sidebar from there.

How did we do?

Pollers: General Overview, Deployment Strategy, Build Out & Setup

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