Monitoring The Irmc; Monitoring With Snmp - Cisco C880 M5 Configuration Manual

6

Monitoring the iRMC

6.1

Monitoring with SNMP

SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) is an application-layer protocol that
provides a message format for communication between SNMP managers and
agents. SNMP provides a standardized framework and a common language used for
the monitoring and management of devices in a network.
The SNMP framework has three parts:
SNMP manager
l
SNMP agent
l
MIB
l
The SNMP manager is the system used to control and monitor the activities of
network hosts using SNMP. The most common managing system is called a Network
Management System (NMS). The term NMS can be applied to either a dedicated
device used for network management, or the applications used on such a device. A
variety of network management applications are available for use with SNMP. These
features range from simple command-line applications to feature-rich graphical user
interfaces.
The SNMP agent is the software component within the managed device that
maintains the data for the device and reports these data, as needed, to managing
systems. Agent and MIB reside on the routing device (router, access server, or
switch). To enable the SNMP agent, you must define a relationship between the
manager and the agent.
The Management Information Base (MIB) is a virtual information storage area for
network management information, which consists of collections of managed objects.
Within the MIB there are collections of related objects, defined in MIB modules. MIB
modules are written in the SNMP MIB module language, as defined in STD 58, RFC
2578, RFC 2579, and RFC 2580.
The SNMP agent contains MIB variables whose values the SNMP manager can
request or change with Get or Set operations. A manager can get a value from an
agent or store a value into that agent. The agent gathers data from the MIB, the
repository for information about device parameters and network data. The agent can
also respond to manager requests to Get or Set data.
A key feature of SNMP is the ability to generate notifications from an SNMP agent.
These notifications do not require that requests be sent from the SNMP manager.
Asynchronous notifications can be generated as traps or inform requests. Traps are
messages alerting the SNMP manager to a condition on the network. Inform requests
(informs) are traps that
Cisco C880 M5 Configuration Guide
6 Monitoring the iRMC
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