Network Monitor A Comprehensive User Interface to OpenNMS

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(Network Monitor)A Comprehensive User Interface
to OpenNMS

• Joseph Scoccimaro
• Jonathan Gdalevich

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Outline

• Goals
• Whats Out There (technical)
• Whats Out There (user interface)
• Proposal
• Questions

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Our Goals

• To provide a informative and concise presentation
  of data for a network management system.
• Currently we believe many UIs out there are very
  cluttered with many useless screens.
• Netor will bring alerts of the network to the
  administrators attention and provide important
  data with easy and fast access.
• Netor will also include MRTG to allow graphing of
  the statistics.

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Network Management
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(No Transcript)
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OpenNMS

• OpenNMS is open-source software.
• Designed to monitor tens of thousands of
  interfaces.
• Three main functions
• Service level monitoring
• Performance measurement
• Event management

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OpenNMS (cont)

• OpenNMS performs service level monitoring by
  periodically testing various services.
• Performance measurement is accomplished by
  gathering data from the network devices and
  trending that information over time.
• Event management includes the ability to store
  events in a database and execute automatic
  actions when they occur.

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OpenNMS (cont)

• OpenNMS can store information to Round Robin
  Database files (RRD).
• RRD files are set to a certain size upon creation
  and don get larger.
• Using RRD files allows use to analyze data
  collected by OpenNMS
• RRD files can also be used for graphing
  statistics using MRTG
• Web-site www.opennms.org

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(No Transcript)
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Net-SNMP Agent

• Net-SNMP has a open source SNMP agent available
  for Linux, Unix, and Windows.
• It gives us the opportunity to have SNMP agents
  without having to spend money on expensive
  equipment.
• The network administrator can personalize what
  types of data the agent gives.

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Net-SNMP (cont)

• The administrator can set the values in the
  sysdecription field and other fields.
• It also gives the administrator the ability to
  monitor processes running on the machine.
• Allowing the personalization of what data the
  agent gathers this application can be used in a
  wide variety of networks.

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User Interface
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UI Principles

• Conceptual Model
• Whats it for?
• Metaphor
• Similar to real-live interface
• Hierarchy
• Whats more important?
• Clarity
• White Space, Less is More
• Alignment
• English Language
• Color
• Cool Factor

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OpenNMS
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OpenNMS (cont)

• Advantages
• Good alignment
• Clear/Easy to read
• Disadvantages
• Too many screens
• Organization problems (search)
• Too much navigation required

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Ntop
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Ntop (cont)

• Advantages
• Tabs and side menu
• Little navigation
• Attractive screens
• Disadvantages
• Cluttering
• Not very interactive

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Netcool
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Netcool (cont)

• Advantages
• Interactive tree menu
• Interactive screens
• Visualization
• Disadvantage
• Cool factor
• Too many colors

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HP OpenView
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HP OpenView (cont)

• Advantage
• Concept
• Similar to other apps
• Organization/Clarity
• Visualization
• Disadvantages
• Too many windows
• Similar to MSVS ?

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IBM Tivoli
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IBM Tivoli (cont)

• Advantages
• Usability/Organization
• Easy navigation
• Clarity/Visualization
• Few windows
• Disadvantages
• Few windows

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Visualization Tools
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MRTG - Multi Router Traffic Grapher

• Tool to monitor traffic load on network links
• Perl scripts use SNMP to read traffic counters
• C program logs/graphs data
• Open Source
• Easy to use/port

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RRD Round Robin Database

• MRTG redone
• Stores and displays time-series data
• Pert with C
• Open Source
• MIB 1.3.6.1.4.1.14697

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(No Transcript)
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JRobin

• Java based RRD
• Open Sources
• Portable Files
• Stand-alone Java library
• Excellent Visualization

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JRobin (cont)
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JRobin (cont)
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Network Monitor
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Functionality

• Network Health
• What went wrong, how important, emergency
• Network Map
• What devices, how many, how connected
• Device Information
• Information about individual device
• MRTG
• Graph of networks traffic

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User Interface

• Tab Based
• Well Organized
• Based on existing interfaces
• Java/JBuilder
• Easy to use/navigate

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Questions?