Foglight for Infrastructure 5.9.8 - Infrastructure Utilities User Guide

Expanding your collection of monitored network devices

The Devices Management dashboard allows you to expand your collection of monitored network devices by adding new devices to the list. Adding a new network device prompts the Net Monitor Agent to start collecting information about it in the next collection period.

This assumes that you already have the agent package deployed to the Foglight Agent Manager host, and one or more active Net Monitor Agent instances are in place. For complete information on how to deploy an agent package, and how to create and activate agent instances, see the Administration and Configuration Help.

To start monitoring a network device:

On the Devices Management dashboard, click Add.

The Add Device(s) dialog box appears.

In the Add Device(s) dialog box, provide information about the network device that you want to monitor.

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Device(s) Name: Type the names of one or more network devices that you want to monitor. This can be a host name or a host IP address. If a host name is specified, Foglight Net Monitor resolves it using DNS.

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Above devices belong to a private network of: If the hosts on which these devices are installed belong to a private network, select this check box and type the network name.


	NOTE: Devices belonging to a private network should be monitored from one monitoring location (agent) only. You should specify only one location per monitored device in that case.

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Expected Response Time. Specify the expected amount of round-trip response time in milliseconds between the monitored location and the network device.

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Trace Route (Enable): Select this check box if you want to trace the route from the monitoring station to the device. If you do not select this option, you can execute a trace route in real time on the Trace Route page. For more information, see Tracing data packets between monitoring locations and network devices.

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Monitor by: Specify one or more rules for collecting information about the monitored devices.

Location: Select the host from which you want to collect information about the monitored devices.


	TIP: The list of all running Net Monitor Agent instances is available for selection in the Location box.

To add a new monitoring host, you must first create a Net Monitor Agent instance on that host, activate it, and start its data collection. To do that, click Create new agent. For more information about creating and activating agent instances and starting their data collection, see the Administration and Configuration Help.

Interval: Specify the collection interval for this device. The values in the list reflect the data collection intervals that are configured for all Net Monitor Agent instances that are running on the selected location. For example, if there are two agents with collection intervals of 10 and 15 minutes, these intervals appear in the list.

Mode: Specify the collection mode that you want to use for this device. The values in the list reflect the collection modes that are configured for all Net Monitor Agent instances that are running on the selected location. For example, if there are two agents with one running in Quick Check mode, and another in Normal mode, both collection modes appear in the list.


	TIP: Quick Check mode verifies whether a device is alive; it does not instruct the agent to collect data unless it fails to detect the devices you have told it to monitor. Use Quick Check mode when you want to frequently verify that devices are up and running. Normal Check mode collects data from the device during the specified collection intervals. This mode allows the agent to send the specified packet size and number of packets to collect and can use trace route to collect paths from one location to the monitored device, when the trace route option is enabled. Quick Check mode just sends packets with specific packet size and does not use trace route. When an agent is run in Quick Check mode, the agent can monitor more devices than in Normal Check mode. If you just want to monitor the device availability and are not interested in the device performance statistics, use Quick Check mode instead of Normal mode.

Click

Add to add the selected monitoring location to the table. If you want to collect information about the specified devices from a different location, or using a different mode or interval, you can specify additional monitoring locations.

To look for a specific location, you can filter the list using the Search box.

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Advanced Settings: To specify advanced settings such as the device name override, the number of packets to ping, the packet size when pinging, ping timeout, or trace route timeout, click Advanced Settings and override the default values, as required.

Device Name Override (Optional): Type the device name override, as required. Device name override can be used if you monitor two network devices that share an IP address. You can override the name of one of those devices to identify it. If specified, the device override name appears as that device's name in the browser interface. Another reason why you might need to override a device name is when a device is a host object in the Management Server. In that case, if you do not override the device name, its status reflects the host object status, instead of the device status.

Ping Number of Packets: Type the number of ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) or UDP (Universal Datagram Protocol) packets to send to the device.

Ping Packet Size: Type the size of the data portion of the packet in bytes.

Trace Route Timeout: Type the amount of time in seconds after which a route trace times out.

When done, click Save in the Advanced Settings dialog box.

In the Add Device(s) dialog box, click Save.

The Add Device(s) dialog box closes, and the Devices Management dashboard refreshes, showing the newly added device in the list.

Removing network devices from the existing collection

The Devices Management dashboard allows you to remove network devices from the existing collection of monitored devices. Removing a device from the list causes the Net Monitor Agent to stop collecting information about that device. The data previously collected from a removed device is kept in the Foglight database in accordance with the existing persistence settings. For more information about persistence policies, refer to the Administration and Configuration Help.

To stop monitoring a network device:

On the Devices Management dashboard, select the network device that you no longer want to monitor, and click Delete.

The Confirm message box appears.

Click Yes to confirm the removal and close the message box.

A message box appears, indicating that the operation is complete.

Click OK to close it.

In the Devices Management dashboard, review the list of monitored devices.

The newly removed network device no longer appears in the list.

Viewing and editing individual network device details

You can view and edit the monitoring settings associated with individual network devices, when required. For example, you can start monitoring a network device using a different host, or change the data collection periods for specific locations.

To view and edit network device details:

On the Devices Management dashboard, in the row containing the network device whose settings you want to review, in the Edit column, click Edit

The Edit Device dialog box appears.

In the Edit Device dialog box, review the device settings, and make any changes, as required.

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Device Name: Type the names of one or more network devices that you want to monitor. This can be a host name or a host IP address. If a host name is specified, Foglight Net Monitor resolves it using DNS.

•

Above devices belong to a private network of: If the hosts on which these devices are installed belong to a private network, select this check box and type the network name.


	NOTE: Devices belonging to a private network should be monitored from one monitoring location (agent) only. You should specify only one location per monitored device in that case.

•

Expected Response Time. Specify the expected amount of round-trip response time in milliseconds between the monitored location and the network device.

•

Trace Route (Enable): Select this check box if you want to trace the route from the monitor station to the device. If you do not select this option, you can execute a trace route in real time on the Trace Route page. For more information, see Tracing data packets between monitoring locations and network devices.

•

Monitor by: Specify one or more rules for collecting information about the monitored devices.

Location: Select the host from which you want to collect information about the monitored devices.


	TIP: The list of all running Net Monitor Agent instances is available for selection in the Location box.

Interval: Specify the collection interval for this device. The values in the list reflect the data collection intervals that are configured for all Net Monitor Agent instances that are running on the selected location. For example, if there are two agents with the collection intervals of 10 and 15 minutes, these intervals appear in the list.


	TIP: Quick Check mode verifies whether a device is alive; it does not instruct the agent to collect data unless it fails to detect the devices you have told it to monitor. Use Quick Check mode when you want to frequently verify that devices are up and running. Normal Check mode collects data from the device during the specified collection intervals. This mode allows the agent to send the specified packet size and number of packets to collect and can use trace route to collect paths from one location to the monitored device, when the trace route option is enabled. Quick Check mode just sends a fixed number of small-size packets and does not use trace route. When an agent is run in Quick Check mode, the agent can monitor more devices than in Normal Check mode. If you just want to monitor the device availability and are not interested in the device performance statistics, use Quick Check mode instead of Normal mode.

Click

To look for a specific location, you can filter the list using the Search box.

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Ping Number of Packets: Type the number of ICMP (Internet Control Message Protocol) or UDP (Universal Datagram Protocol) packets to send to the device.

Ping Packet Size: Type the size of the data portion of the packet in bytes.

Trace Route Timeout: Type the amount of time in seconds after which a route trace times out.

When done, click Save in the Advanced Settings dialog box.

In the Edit Device dialog box, click Save.

Investigating the performance of network devices

A typical monitored environment includes a set of monitored network devices and Net Monitor Agents that collect data about these devices. These components are displayed on the Performance Browser dashboard. Use this dashboard to see the state of individual network devices when monitored from one or multiple locations.

You can access this dashboard from the navigation panel. Under Dashboards, click Infrastructure > NetMonitor > Performance Browser.

When you navigate to the Performance Browser for the first time, the Monitoring tab appears open. This tab provides an overall summary of your monitored network devices.


	TIP: In addition to the Monitoring tab, the Performance Browser also offers the FAQ tab. For more information, see Exploring the FAQ tab.

Start by indicating the type of objects that you want to investigate. To do that, select the appropriate tile at the top of the Monitoring tab: Network Devices or Monitor Locations. This causes the Quick View to display information about the selected objects. Next, select an object or group of objects in the Quick View, such as All Network Devices or All Monitor Locations, to display additional information about that selection.