Table of Contents
Building a Monitoring Template
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:
- Name: The name of the monitoring template. The name should describe what kind of device you will monitor.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 Ubiquity devices support v1 only.
- Version 2c: Version 2 is the most popular version being used and it support 64 bit counters.
- Version 3: is the newest and most secure version of SNMP. It is important to note that not all devices support V3.
- Inventory Models: The Inventory models section allows you to select which inventory model(s) will be targeted for monitoring by this template. It is recommended to only monitor one manufacturer per template, as mixing manufacturers will make selecting the OIDs more difficult.
- The Deployment Type allows you to add further filtering to your monitoring template, allowing you to monitor specific deployments of the previously selected inventory models
Once the monitoring template has been created, you can edit out the template to change ICMP and SNMP settings and also add specific OID to be graphed.
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:
Editing out OIDs:
Once the graph has been created, you can now tie in specific OIDs (Object Identifier) to be graphed. Each manufacturer and models supports different OIDs and thus we need to make sure we are inputting the correct OIDs to be monitored. Most manufacturers provide you with a MIB file that can be opened with special browser to find the correct OID. To find the MIBs you can go to the manufacturers website and download them.
Ubiquity: Go to Ubiquiti website and choose the correct model. Click on the firmware version you are on and then click on download SNMP MIBs.
Mikrotik:
You can download Mikrotik MIB by going to their wiki page and under the Management Information Base, click on Router OS MIBs.
https://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:SNMP
Cambium:
Cambium hosts all their MIBs online which can be viewed online.
MIB Browser:
You also need to download a MIB browser to open and find the correct OIDS from the MIBs. There are many MIB browsers but we will use Ireasoning Free MiB Browser:
Install the MIB browser and then go to File and Load the MIB file you downloaded. Open the MIB file by going to File> Load MIBS and then by going down the new MIB tree until you find the correct stat you want to gather information about. The OID will be listed on the bottom left side with the name of the OID.
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 in two different locations:
- From the Network Site Management View > Inventory & Network > Inventory Items and by clicking on any item in the list for the sidebar view
- From the Account Management View > inventory & Network > Inventory Items and by clicking on any item in the list for the sidebar view
