Traps and Notifications Receiver:
Defining Traps and Notifications in SmartMIB

For each; the received Trap Description and the received Trap Objects Descriptions to be properly displayed; the Trap event itself have to be known (defined) to the (TRE) within SmartMIB. 

Defining the Traps to the TRE is done by first adding the Trap details from the GUI under the ‘Traps’ menu item, ‘Traps Definition’, to get the ‘Trap’s List’ window shown in Figure (1). If the User clicks on the ‘Add’ button; the  ‘Add New Trap’ window shown in Figure (3).

For Traps already defined, the user could click on the ‘Modify’ button (or simply double-Click on the trap listed) to start the ‘Modify Traps’ Information’ window which is identical to the ‘Add New Trap’ window.

Figure (1):

The user can add the Trap’s Description desired and that best fits the goal of ultimately making the Alarm simple and informative particularly to the Help Desk technician or the Engineer who will be in charge of reading and reacting to the particular Trap and who may not be the ultimate expert in dealing with the event received.

The User then needs to enter the Standard (or the Enterprise) Trap Identifier for the TRE to identify the Trap. The User should also specify the Trap’s Variable Bindings by selecting the Trap’s Variable Bindings from the Object’s List which is populated in much the same way as the Supported MIBs for the particular SmartMIB package installed. To access the trap VarBind list simply open the ‘Traps’ main menu option and select ‘Trap VarBinds’ as is shown in the figure (2) below.

Figure (2):

In Figure (3) you could also note that the User could select the desired colour for the display of the particular Trap and set – if needed – the popup window option.

The popup window option if checked will indeed produce a popup window that contained the Trap’s description as entered by the User for the particular Trap received. A sample display of such window is shown in Figure (4) below.

It is also possible to flag a particular trap in the TRE to prevent its display to the Journal. This could be done by checking the ‘Don’t display to journal’  check box.

Figure (3):

Figure (4):

Its important to note that the User could setup an automated action on receiving a particular Trap. This action could either be an email or a mobile SMS message, but most importantly an action could be in the form of starting another management script that is SOSL based.

It also important to note that the User access to the defined Trap could also be assigned by clicking on the User Access button in a manner similar to what is described in Defining the Report’s User Access. The result of this assignment is in fact that the User access determines the display status of the particular Trap being received in the Trap’s Journal. This is NOT to say that the Trap will not be received!

The fact that the User sees only those Traps assigned to that User allows for creating and documenting current work processes that should be automated by the system as a whole. It also documents the necessary "Knowledge Base" that directly contributes to the Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) cycles becoming more efficient.

Finally; Figure (5) shows an unformatted/undefined Trap received and processed  by the (TRE) of SmartMIB. In this case the Trap will have no description and its Objects will be listed in their raw format with their perspective SNMP MIB Object identifiers and their values.

Figure (5):

[White Papers], [Open a Support Ticket], [Report Defects],
[Enhancement Requests], [Beta Solution Program]

[Home], [About], [Solutions Center], [NMS Market], [Products & Services],
[Management Technology], [Technical Support], [Contact us], [Site Map]