NetworkInterfacePollerd

Overview

The Unified Assurance Metric Network Interface Poller is the common SNMP MIB2 interface collection poller, retrieving availability, Inbound/Outbound Traffic, Errors, and Discards. This poller is device oriented (polls by device) and uses Metric Instances for Interface Name (from the MIB2 table).

Network Interface Poller Setup

  1. Devices must exist in the Device Catalog for this application to be able to function. Devices can be created in several different ways:

    1. Using the Core Device Auto Discovery application.

    2. Using the Manual Discovery UI:

      Configuration -> Device Discovery -> Manual Discovery

    3. Manually entering all values using the Devices UI:

      Configuration -> Device Catalog -> Devices

  2. Devices must by SNMP discovered for this application to be able to get data from the devices. See the Core Device SNMP Discovery application for additional information.

  3. Instances must exist for the interfaces to be polled. This is generally done by using the Metric SNMP Network Interface Discovery Agent application.

  4. Metrics must exist for the interfaces to be polled. Metrics can be created in several different ways:

    1. The default rules for the Metric Custom Poller Discovery Agent application will create the metrics for some device types and some interfaces.

    2. Using a polling policy to create metrics using whatever restrictions are needed. See the Polling Policies UI and Metric Poller Discovery Agent application documentation:

      Configuration -> Metrics -> Polling Policies

    3. Using the Polling Assignments UI to manually select which devices and instances are processed. See the related documentation:

      Configuration -> Metrics -> Polling Assignments

  5. Enable the default Service, unless a specific configuration option is needed:

    Configuration -> Broker Control -> Services

Default Service

Field Value
Package Name coreCollection-app
Service Name Metric Network Interface Poller
Service Program bin/core/collection/NetworkInterfacePollerd
Service Arguments
Service Description Metric Poller used to poll Mib2 Interfaces (SNMP) Availability, Traffic, Errors, and Discards
Failover Type Standalone (Supported: Standalone, Primary/Backup, Cluster)
Status Disabled
Privileged (Checked)

Default Configuration

Name Value Possible Values Notes
CheckTime 900 Integer How often (in seconds) where the application checks to see if there are any relevant changes.
DeviceZoneID Default First Zone Integer The poller will only retrieve devices in the specific zone.
InterfaceType Text, 255 characters The poller supports the InterfaceType configuration. Valid entries are IfName, IfAlias, IfDescr, or IfIndex for the instance name. By default InterfaceType is unset and uses IfDescr.
LogFile logs/MetricNetworkInterfacePoller.log Text, 255 characters Relative path to Log File.
LogLevel ERROR OFF, FATAL, ERROR, WARN, INFO, DEBUG Logging level used by application.
PollTime 300 Integer How often the poller will start a poll cycle, in seconds.
Threads 3 Integer Number of process threads created. The aggregator takes a third of this value (rounded up) for database threads unless overridden by the DBThreads application configuration.
TimeOut Integer 5 The time out for the SNMP connection.
64bit Enabled Enabled/Disabled Optional - If enabled, the poller will attempt to get the high capacity counters that use a higher rollover value.
DBThreads Integer Optional - Number of database threads to be created. If not specified, defaults to a third (rounded up) of Threads application configuration.
DeviceGroupID Integer Optional - If specified, the poller will only retrieve devices in the specific group.
PollByIP Enabled Enabled/Disabled Optional - If enabled, the device IP address will be used to connect to the device instead of the device DNS name.
PreferIPv4 Enabled Enabled/Disabled Optional - Controls whether or not to prefer IPv4 transport to communicate with Devices. This option is only considered if both IPv4 and IPv6 are available for a device. If this config is missing, IPv6 will be preferred.
SpikePreventionMultiplier 1 Integer Optional - Enabling spike prevention prevents data spikes over a maximum metric value for an interface. The maximum is automatically detected, but you can also set a custom maximum. See Metrics in Unified Assurance User's Guide for information about metric fields.
  • To disable spike prevention, set this to 0. To use utilization thresholds when spike prevention is disabled, you must set a custom maximum for the metric.
  • To limit values to the configured maximum, set this to 1.
  • To allow higher values than the configured maximum, set this to an integer greater than 1. The limit will be the integer multiplied by the configured maximum.
    For example, if the detected metric maximum is detected as 16327859 and you set SpikePreventionMultiplier to 2, values up to 32655718 will be allowed.
ThresholdThreads Integer Optional - Number of threshold threads to be created. Enabled the checking of thresholds in the application instead of the Default Threshold Engine. If not specified, application threshold checking is disabled.
SendAllViolations Disabled Enabled/Disabled Optional - If enabled, thresholds will send violation notifications every poll cycle rather than only on state change. Requires 'ThresholdThreads'

Best Practices

The following list shows the best practices for working with this application:

Administration Details

The following list shows the technical details you will need for advanced administration of the application: