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Monitoring Systems on EMMAN

past and present.

John Cheesbrough

EMMAN Technical Manager (Strategic) April 2, 2009 2

Roadmap • A potted history of the Network

• Monitoring systems added as we go along….

• Making statistics available to the sites

• Review of systems need to consolidate

• Where we are now

• Where we are going

April 2, 2009 3

Janet and the subsequent rise of MAN (1).

• 1994 – Nottingham MAN was formed using 100Mb/s FDDI over dark fibre between

Nottingham Trent University and University of Nottingham –  Janet feed of 4Mb/s from Manchester.

• 1996 –  EMMAN formed with the addition of University of Derby via 8Mb/s link

• 1997 –  FDDI replaced by OC-3 ATM. –  EMMAN now comprises 3 Universities and 6 colleges.

• 1998 –  Janet feed to EMMAN now 34Mb/s.

April 2, 2009 4

Janet and the subsequent rise of MAN (2).

• 1999 –  EMMAN expanding throughout East Midlands with the addition of dark fibre to

Loughborough University and DeMontfort University. –  Transport via OC-3 ATM.

• 2000 –  Fibre gets to Derby and this upgrades the performance to 155Mb/s via OC-3

ATM.

• 2001 –  SuperJanet 4 gives up to 2.5Gb/s feed to EMMAN – University of Leicester, University of Lincoln and University of Northampton all

connected via dark fibre. –  The addition of a dark fibre link between DMU and UoL forms a ring around the

centre offering resilience. –  All meshed circuits at 155Mb/s.

April 2, 2009 5

Janet and the subsequent rise of MAN (3).

• 2001 –  Janet college connection programme saw the number of FE colleges rise to 34 –  Regional Support Centres started.

• 2002 – Now we are 8 – EMMAN Ltd. Formed. –  ATM mesh replaced by Gigabit Ethernet cloud via OSPF.

• 2006 –  Backbone overhauled in preparation for SuperJanet 5. – Dark fibres moved to DWDM. –  Two new secure nodes created for the RNEPs. –  SuperJanet 5 gives 2 x 10Gb/s feed to EMMAN production network.

• 2008 –  All FE colleges upgraded to 100Mb/s downlinks.

April 2, 2009 6

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Monitoring – History follows Network development (1) • 1994

–  Few devices, so availability monitoring was added to the existing LAN monitoring using Sun Net Manger.

• 1996 / 98 – More routers therefore What’s Up for availability and MRTG for utilisation. –  1998 realised it would be easy to extend viewing of availability and utilisation to

the sites.

• 1999 – Nagios added to monitor availability and give alerts.

• 2001 –  Statscout added for interface data, errors, throughput etc. long term trends and

reporting.

• 2002 Janet Netsight –  Augments edge site tools with national and international status.

April 2, 2009 8

Monitoring – History follows Network development (2) • 2004

– Netflow data now collected by Crannog Netflow tracker. Licensing only allows centralised logon therefore only made available to the 8 “Shareholders”.

• 2006 –  Stealthwatch network anomaly detection system installed as a resource with

limited access. –  (2009) Part of a shared security services project will expand the capability,

availability and use of this.

• 2008 –  Project started to rationalise the monitoring tools.

April 2, 2009 9

Monitoring Rationalisation What do we have? • MRTG

– Utilisation tends etc. Available to all sites via login to EMMAN web site

• Nagios –  Availability, alerts. Limited availability

• Netsight –  Availability, utilisation. Available to all sites via login to Netsight.

• Statseeker –  Long term storage of interface statistics. Good for trending and reports as well

as diagnostics. Available to systems administrators.

• Netflow Tracker – Netflow analysis per interface. Limited availability.

April 2, 2009 10

Monitoring Rationalisation What do we want? • Monitoring

–  Able to replace the functionality of at least two of the existing systems. – No issues with IPv6

• User interface – Web based interface –  Site based accounts that are easily tailored for limited views. –  Easily tailored views on web pages. – Home page portal to other monitoring systems.

• Reporting –  Flexible reporting from database. – Management trend analysis and capacity planning –  Systems analysis, errors etc.

• Alerting –  Easily timetabled alert routing for “on call” rota via web

April 2, 2009 11

Monitoring Rationalisation Next step (1) • Specification comparison of available systems

• Shortlist for evaluation

• None meet all requirements.

April 2, 2009 12

Monitoring Rationalisation Next step (2) • Long “Short List” for evaluation

• Cacti

• Denika / Scrutinizer

• Nagios

• Openview

• OpManager

• Orion

• SNMPc

• Whats Up

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April 2, 2009 13

Monitoring Rationalisation

• System that best suited our needs was

• Solarwinds Orion

April 2, 2009 14

Orion

•  Initially –  replaces the functionality of Nagios and MRTG – Gives additional information to the end users in the form of reports, errors /

discards – Greater visibility of the network availabilty

• Next phase –  Add Netflow statistics and reports

• Last phase (Admin only) –  Configuration manager links configuration changes to monitoring –  Scheduled backing up of Cisco configurations replacing existing ftp server.

April 2, 2009 15

Quick Demonstration

April 2, 2009 16

Quick Demonstration

• Or NOT!

• Here are slides I prepared earlier…….

April 2, 2009 17

Administrators Home Page

April 2, 2009 18

Administrators Page – College Router

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April 2, 2009 19

Administrators Page – LAN Interface

April 2, 2009 20

Site Home Page

April 2, 2009 21

Site Page - Router

April 2, 2009 22

Site Page – LAN Interface

April 2, 2009 23

Site Page – Netflow home

April 2, 2009 24

Site Page – Netflow college feed

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Monitoring Systems on EMMAN

past and present.

John Cheesbrough

EMMAN Technical Manager (Strategic)