NNM Discovery

Jayashree Arunkumar

ca.com
Initial IP Discovery
 ovstart starts ovspmd
 ovspmd starts netmon
 netmon queries NNM management station’s SNMP
agent for configuration information which includes
– IP Address
– Subnet mask
– Default route
– ARP Cache
4. For each IP Address found
– Ping it to make sure it is alive
– Make an SNMP query to determine SNMP version
supported
– Use SNMP to retrieve configuration information
5. Repeat step 4 until no new IP addresses are found

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netmon Polling of a new node

1. If node responds to ping, netmon places it

in the database
2. Configuration poll uses SNMP to gather all
node information
3. Topology poll on connector device
determines which nodes are heard from
which ports (sysObjID – oid_to_type file)
4. Discovery poll retrieves the ARP cache to
find more nodes

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Setting Object Attributes and Symbol type

 Configuration poll gathers direct information

including nodes sysobjectID
 Derives other attributes from sysobjectID
– Correlates system object ID to symbol type and
other miscellaneous attributes in oid_to_sym file
– Correlates system object ID to topology and
vendor attributes in oid_to_type or HPoid2type
files

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Initial IPX Discovery

 Routing Information Protocol (RIP) – finds the

networks
 Diagnostic Broadcast – finds netware
systems on networks
 Diagnostic Request – obtains system
information and status
 Service Advertising Protocol (SAP) Request –
gets information about server names

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MAC Layer Discovery and Monitoring

 MAC layer discovery and monitoring

– Bridge MIB (RFC 1493)
– Repeater MIB (RFC 2108)
– 8023MAU MIB (RFC 1515)
 MAC interface status determination
 Unnumbered interfaces (Routers)

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Discovery of HTTP nodes

 System object ID obtained

 Port 80 polled for Home Page 
isHTTPSupported
 Web Server Home Page
 Port 280 Polled for Configuration Page
 isHTTPManaged
 Web Server Configuration Page

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Extended Topology Discovery
 Heterogeneous Layer 2 switched network
management (LAN & WAN)
 Targeted views for quickly identifying root
cause
– View switched environment and complex
relationships between devices
– View network services such as OSPF and VLAN
 Enhances NNM views: neighbor, station,
internet
 Superior root-cause analysis via improved
path detection

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What extended topology discovers

 “Layer-two” connectivity
 VLAN information
 ATM information
 OSPF information

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Troubleshooting IP Discovery

 Common problems which affect IP discovery

– Incorrect subnet mask
– Non-matching SNMP community name
– Non-SNMP routers
– Too few SNMP nodes
– Insufficient or isolated traffic
– Bridged, not routed, networks
– Name Resolution (DNS) problems

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Name Resolution problems

 Opening ovw takes a long time

 Labels appear as IP addresses instead of
hostnames
– use checkDNS.ovpl –v (NNMCD\support) to check
DNS performance
 If DNS request takes a long time, netmon
generates an alert
 Timeout can be controlled by –T option in
netmon.lrf file

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Tracing and Logging Operations

 Logging – records externally observable

events such as connection establishment,
state changes and errors
 Tracing – captures inbound and outbound
packets going through the network
 netmon –M <tracemask> (2 – ICMP, 8 –
SNMP) to enable tracing
 netmon –a <action-nr> sends an event to
netmon to dump its internal data structures

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Configuring Extended Discovery

 You can change how netmon discovers

your network by:
– telling netmon to discover more by
managing nodes
– giving netmon a seed file to speed up initial
discovery
– specifying options in netmon.lrf

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Using loadhosts

 Few SNMP nodes / restrict

management to specific nodes
 Place nodes directly into the topology
database
 loadhosts –m <subnetmask> filename
 For controlled discovery turn off new
node discovery polling process

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Seeding Initial IP Discovery
 By default, netmon only discovers nodes on the local
subnet only
 A seed file is a simple ASCII file containing a list of IP
addresses, preferably gateways and routers
 All networks connected to the seed file entries are
discovered exclusively
 Seed file typically contains
– IP address of management station
– IP address of default router
– IP address in other networks ( routers, file servers etc.)

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Using a seed file

1. Create a seed file, using routers and gateways

2. Modify the netmon.lrf file
 Add –s <pathname/filename> to the options
 eg: -s “C\:/dir/seedfile”
3. Use ovaddobj on netmon’s LRF
 cd %OV_LRF%
 ovaddobj netmon.lrf
4. Stop netmon
5. Redo initial discovery, if required
6. Restart netmon

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Redo Initial Discovery
 Stop NNM
 Remove Openview databases
– cd %OV_DB%
– remove \install_dir\databases\openview
 Remove all events
– remove \install_dir\databases\eventdb
 Re-register fields
– ovstart ovwdb
– ovw -fields
 Start NNM

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Useful netmon Discovery options

 -J Speed up discovery
 -r Query the routing table
 -Q SNMP-queue-length
 -S Discover secondary addresses
 -w Control discovery of software
loopback addresses

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Discovery filters

 Collection domain – set of nodes actively

discovered and monitored by NM
 Purpose of discovery filter
– Limit netmon’s discovery and polling
– Reduce IP devices actively monitored
– Limit objects added to the topology database
– Reduce computer resources overhead
– Reduce polling cycle time

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Configuring netmon.noDiscover

 Newly discovered IP addresses are

compared against the file
 If the IP address is in the file, it is ignored –
No discovery is done on that address
 Valid entries are
– 10.36.104.*
– 10.225.50-100.*
– 10.2.197.1
 Must be created in \install_dir\conf\ folder

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Discovery Filter Evaluation
 Network and Segment objects are created after
discovery filtering
 If a node passes, all interfaces associated with that
node also pass
 If an interface passes, the node associated with the
interface passes, including all other interfaces
 If you want to filter a node completely, you must filter
the node object and all the interfaces associated with
that node
 filter file
– \install_dir\conf\C\filters

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Example Discovery Filter

Filters {
CMCLan “CMC Local LAN devices”
{ “IP Address” ~ 192.168.44.* }
}

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Applying a Discovery Filter

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netmon.noDiscover vs Discovery
Filter
 Discovery filter queries a node and then
evaluates whether the node should be
included in the database
 netmon.noDiscover does not even query the
device if IP address matches – saves network
bandwidth and speeds up discovery
 For certain types of devices (routers, switches
etc.) the only option is to use Discovery filter

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