It is often the case that hosts on your network will be similar, but differ in subtle ways depending on their exact purpose. For example some servers may have two internal disks whilst some may have just one, and some servers may have multiple ethernet cards where others do not. Opsview provides attributes to deal with situations like this, as they are a way of associating metadata with a host – here is an example of how to configure Opsview to use them. Continue reading »
Oct 10
Oct 03
This post outlines how to get SNMP traps from ESX hosts and monitor them in Opsview. The first part deals with configuring SNMP traps to get them working correctly with ESX hosts, part 2 tells you how to monitor them with Opsview.
The following steps worked on ESX 4.1. Depending on versions you may have different results. For simplicity, I used 10.0.0.1 as IP for my ESX host, and 10.0.0.99 for my SNMP trap handler. Continue reading »
Sep 19
Alerts happen. They are the reason why monitoring applications were created: to alert us when servers need attention. The difference between an effective network monitoring system and an annoying one is a fine line between information and noise. Alerts should be descriptive and prompt an administrative action, not elicit a huff of frustration. Here are a few ways to keep your Opsview installation (and you) effective and relevant in your company. Continue reading »
Sep 11
Cfengine is one of the most powerful tools available for automating Linux and Unix system administration. Unlike shell or perl scripts cfengine allows you to describe the desired state of the system rather than specifying how to perform each operation. Because of this cfengine scripts are concise and simple to create.
Cfengine is designed to act as part of a ‘computer immune system’ with capabilities including:
- Ensuring correct file and directory permissions
- Backing up, archiving and synching of data
- Tidying the filesystem and removal of obselete files
- Management of NFS mounts
- Anomaly detection – similar to tripwire
- Automated editing of system configuration
- Process management
Cfengine is designed to be centrally managed greatly simplifying the task of administering multiple systems.
At Altinity we use Cfengine for the following tasks:
- Initial configuration of hosts
- Ensuring system integrity
- Automating routine admin tasks
- Automated error recovery (restarting processes, removing lock files, etc).
We’ll be making sample scripts available on this site shortly.
Links
Cfengine home – http://www.cfengine.org/
Cfengine downloads – http://www.cfengine.org/mirrors.html
Cfengine documentation – http://www.cfengine.org/documentation.phtml
Cfengine overview by Æleen Frisch – http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/onlamp/2003/05/29/essentialsysadmin.html
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