Network Device’s Modules Inventory Report

Introduction

Our IMMS model calls for Quality Maintenance Management of polled or collected management data. This implies that it’s the duty of the software manager to poll the appropriate data on which the management process will be based. To put that differently; its up to the manager to poll only the data that is most appropriate and relevant to the network service, resource, and event being managed to serve as the corner stone for the rest of the management process.

Managing and in fact understanding the concept of Quality Maintenance Management will finally enable network Administrators to overcome the confusion lurking around the industry that is caused by many NMS solutions providers who lack the comprehension of such concept! One such example is seen in the Asset Inventory Management of the Physical Entities of the network devices. The corner stone in the Physical Entity management should be the “Physical Class” MIB Object which - as the name implies - classifies each detected physical entity. Management processes should test the class of the entity before polling the appropriate MIB object for that class of entities.

Its interesting to note that many network hardware vendors have resorted to implementing different MIBs per hardware entity class to tackle this industry wide problem. This solution presentation however demonstrates how SOSL is fully capable of resolving once and for all similar industry wide shortcomings. 

Solution Overview

This management solution focuses on detecting ONLY those Physical Entities designated as “Modules”. The solution hence defines a module name and description, then initiates the polling process under which the Devices (or in a specified AMZ) are fed into the polling SNMP engine, where the Physical Entity’s descriptions on each device are learnt through polling the value of the entPhysicalDescr MIB Object. The corresponding Physical Class is polled and a variable handler is defined to store its value which is then tested with an IF conditional statement; if the class status for the particular entity is ‘Module’, then only the relevant Module information are polled from each manages network device.

Information polled include - but is not limited to - the Module name, Hardware and Software revisions, Serial number, and Model name.

SOSL Based Management Process Script Configuration

MODULE ModuleEntity ();

DESCRIPTION "Module Entity Management Process";

BEGIN

            ALL-DEV BY DEV

            {

                        SET-INDEX entPhysicalTable (entPhysicalDescr[entPhysicalIndex, INT]);

                        WITH-INDEX  entPhysicalTable

                        {

                                    POLL (   entPhysicalClass );

                                    DEFINE  entPhysicalClass                       DB INT;

                                    IF         (entPhysicalClass == "9")

                                    THEN

                                                POLL (   entPhysicalHardwareRev;

                                                            entPhysicalName;

                                                            entPhysicalSerialNum;

                                                            entPhysicalMfgName;

                                                            entPhysicalModelName;

                                                            entPhysicalIsFRU;

                                                            entPhysicalSoftwareRev;

                                                            entPhysicalFirmwareRev );

                                    ENDIF;

                        };

END

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