N-Tron iSNMP Suite User Manual

iSNMP Suite

User Manual

10/04/2005 page 1 of 45

iSNMP Suite Help

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Getting Started with iSNMP Editor Page 2

1.1 Auto-Discovery

1.11 Unmanaged Devices

1.12 Managed Devices

Chapter 2 – Manual Device Configuration Page 9

2.1 Unmanaged Devices

2.2 Managed Devices

Chapter 3 – Tag Configuration Page 13

3.1 Polled tags

3.2 Trap tags

3.3 Finding tags

3.4 Filtering tags

Chapter 4 - MIB Template Generator Page 20

Chapter 5- SNMP traps and Event Notification Page 22

Chapter 6 - Network Analyst Configuration Page 25

Chapter 7 – User-Defined derived tags Page 26

Chapter 8 –Advanced iSNMP Settings Page 28

Chapter 9- iSNMP Communicator Page 30

Chapter 10– iSNMP DataViewer Page 35

Chapter 11 – iSNMP OPC Interface Page 39

Appendix A – COM Call Tracing Using TraceHook Components

Chapter 1 - Getting Started with iSNMP Editor

Before you can begin to monitor the health and performance of your Ethernet network, IndustrialSNM P must first be made aware of the network device s that you wish to monitor. Setting up a database o f network data is easy and quick with IndustrialSNMP Editor. The procedure is as follows:

1. Auto-discover or manually define the network devices that you have.

2. Define the data points that you want to read from the network devices.

3. Monitor the configured devices in the iSNM P DataViewer, or

4. Set up your HMI to read the OPC tags from the IndustrialSNM P OPC server.

When you first start IndustrialSNMP Editor, you will see the Explorer-like screen as shown below:

To define the devices in your network, you hav e t w o choices. You can either Auto-Discover the network devices (easiest way), or you can define the network devi ces manually (harder way).

1.1 Auto-Discovery of Network Devices

1. Make sure that the iSNMP computer is con nected to the Ethernet network that you want to Auto-Discover network devices on!

2. Press the Auto-Discover button on the ta skbar or select Auto-Discover from the Operations menu

. Note: The Auto-Discover button is the green eye on the iSNMP menu bar.

The Search Network dialog box should appear. In order to search the network, you will nee d

to tell IndustrialSNMP the range of IP addresses to search. Enter the starting and ending IP address range of the Ethernet devices in your network and press the Beg in button.

you haven’t defined an IP range, IndustrialSNMP won’t allow you to search the network.

After iSNMP has searched the network, a list of both SNMP manageable and unmanaged

devices will be shown in the New Devices dialog box, as shown below.

Note: If you have already defined or auto-discovered a device before, it will not appear in the New Devices dialog box, but instead will appear in the lower Current Devices dialog box.

Note: If

Using the Auto-Discovery feature of IndustrialSN MP assumes that you have already configured the IP address(es) of your network devices. Most manufacturers ship their devices w ithout an IP address preassigned. For help on how to configure your network devices, please consult th e network management manual for the device, or contact your supplier for the hardware. Additionally, while m ost Windows 2000 and XP Professional operating systems have SNMP Services enabled by default, monitoring SNMP data from Windows NT workstations often requires that the SNMP services be installed. Detailed instructions are available from the Microsof t help files.

If you wish to add any of the de vices that the auto-discovery tool has found into the IndustrialSNMP editor, then double-click on the device’s IP address in the New Devices dialog box. If the device is unmanaged, follow this link to the un-managed device Help file section. If the device is SNMP manageable, then turn to the Managed Device Setup Help section.

1.11 Auto Discovering Unmanaged Device Setup

If you have auto-discovered an unmanaged device, by default the Device name that iSNMP will

assign it will be

Replace the default device name with a brief logical Name.

Leave the Device field as

Leave the IP address field unchanged!

Type a brief description of the device in the Description field if you wish.

(Unmanaged Device) - xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx.

(Unmanaged Device).

Below is a screen capture of an example completed Device Wizard screen:

ADVANCED TAB

The advanced tab includes advanced settings primarily concerned with how IndustrialSN MP reacts if a field device is not responding promptly. If you are having problems communicating with a field device adjusting some of these settings may resolve your issues. It is recommended that the settings are left at the default values unless you are asked to make changes by an iSNMP tech support engineer!

The following is a list of definitions for the selections on the Advanced Tab:

Device Timeout (ms): This value is the amount of time allowed

to complete an SNMP get. In situations where there may be a lot of traffic on the network, a longer timeout b efore iSNMP assum es a communication failure has occurred might be help ful. The default setting of 500 ms has been found to be suitable for most

applications.

Device Retries: After an attempt to get data has timed out, th e

Device Retries value represents the number of times that iSNMP

will attempt to retrieve the data before d eciding that the de vice has failed.

Skip Count: This is the amount of time that i SNMP will wa it bef ore

attempting another GET from a device that has fail ed. T he time unit

is defined in the Device timeout setting.

Example ( 800 ms device

timeout with 30 skip count =2400ms before new attempt)

1.12 Auto-Discovered SNMP-Managed Device Setup

In addition to the “Heartbeat” data that iSNMP makes available for all network devices, SNMP-manageable devices have a wealth of additional detailed network data that can be accessed. This section will help you configure your SNMP manageable devices:

DEVICE TAB

If IndustrialSNMP recognizes the managed device from our pre-defined list of supported network devices, much of the information required will be filled in, as illustrated below.

If not, follow the steps below to complete the device configuration:

1. By default, IndustrialSNMP creates a default device name by merging the type of

2. The second field in the Device Wizard is a drop-down Device me nu, which allows you

network device that it discovered wit h the device’s IP address. Since the device name often is used as part of an OPC address string in your HMI, it is a good idea to now change the Device Name to a shorter unique string.

to select from a list of predefin ed SN MP-manageab le dev ices. If the network device tha t you are configuring is one of the devices that IndustrialSNMP has in its predefined device list, this field should already be auto-populated with the type of network device that iSNMP detected. If the network device that you are setting up is not part of the predefined list, you have three choices:

a. You can leave the Device field blank, in which case you w ill have to create each

SNMP data tag individually (the most difficult route.)

b. You can scroll down the list and select from the list of

(x being the number of Ethernet ports that the device has.) For example: let’s assume that IndustrialSNMP has discovered a network switch, but it is not one of the predefined devices in the iSNMP database. If the field device happens to be a 24 port Ethernet switch, you can select the drop-down device menu. Most Ethernet devices support MIBII, which is an industry-standard list of SNMP “tags”. Using the generic MIB template, you sho uld

Generic 24port MIBII device

Generic x-port MIBII

devices

from the

be able to have iSNMP create a large number of useful tags for the device without having to create each data point individually. You can add unique system device tags to the predefined MIBII tags later. (See the SNMP Tag Setup section of Help explaining how to do this.)

c. If you purchased iSNMP Expert Edition, y ou can use the MIB Template Generator

to automatically create a unique template for the device you are configuring. Please read the Using MIB template Generator He lp file.

3. The third field that should be auto-populated is the IP Address for the device. Since

you have auto-discovered the device, you should not change this address (unless you like to create trouble for yourself!) This address follows standard IP addressing format (for example: 192.168.0.30).

4. The fourth field is the Community field.

level that you will be using when communicating to the network device. In an SNMPmanageable device, you can limit the access that an SNMP manager application( such as iSNMP) can have, based on the manager software’s password level. There are generally two default “password” (community) levels; Read and Read/Write. In most SNMP devices, the default community for Read-only privileges is called “Public,” and the default community for Read/Write privileges is “Private.” Some SNMP-manageable devices can be configured to have custom levels of access. Please make sure that the community level you choose is in accordan ce with the access privileges that y ou need. If you want only to limit access on a few SNMP tags, you can select t he highest access level for the device, and then limit the access level for specific SNMP tags within IndustrialSNMP Editor.( See the Ta g Configuration help for mo re details on how to limit access on a tag-by-tag basis.)

5.The fifth field is the Description field. It is not necessary to have a description, b ut i n larger networks, it may help to sort out which device you are looking at in the IndustrialSNMP Editor.

6. The sixth field is the Network Analyst selection. N etwork Analyst is only available

with iSNMP Expert Edition. Whe n the Netw ork analyst b ox is selec ted, iSNMP wi ll create extra OPC tags that represent calculations such as bandwidth utilization and device status. These Network analyst tags are available only when monitoring a network switch. (There is detailed information about the configuration of these points in the

Network Analyst Tag Set-up

ADVANCED TAB

The “community” is actually the control access

The Device Wizard advanced tab includes advanced settings primarily concerned with how iSNMP reacts if a field device does not respond. If you are having problems comm unicating with a field device adjusting some of these settings might resolve your issues. It is recommended that the settings are left at the default values unless you are asked to make changes by a iSNMP tech support engineer!

The following is a list of definitions for the selections on the Advanced Tab:

Device Timeout (ms): This value is the amount of time allowed

to complete an SNMP get. In situations where there m ight be a lot of traffic on the network, a longer time before a communication failure might be helpful. The default setting of 800 ms has been

found to be suitable for most applications.

Device retries: After an attempt to get data has tim ed out, the

device retries value is the amount of time s the SNMP manager will attempt to retrieve the data before failing.

Skip Count: This is the time that the manager will wait before

attempting another GET from a device that has fail ed. T he time unit is defined in the Device timeout setting.

Example ( 800 ms device

timeout with 30 skip count =2400ms before new attempt)

No. of Items/ Message: The IndustrialSN MP software requests

data in groups of OID’s. The number of items / messages refers to the numbers of OID’s requested in one SNMP GET. For most networks, 25 items has been found to be the ideal size of message for the best performance.

After you have finished filling out the field defini tions, press the OK button. At this point if you selected a predefined tag database from the drop-down menu, IndustrialSNMP will ask you if you want to auto-import the tag databa se f or the defined network device. Press OK.

If you selected a predefined tag database, iSNMP will auto-populate the tag list for the device, as seen in the example below:

The Auto-import function will automatically populate your tag database with all the SNMP data that can be accessed from the device.

imported, and in other cases there may be only a few tags

tag database, then you are finished with this device! You can proceed to add additional network devices or simply save your configuration and exit the IndustrialSNMP Editor. If you need to define the MIB data for the device, please reference the SNMP Tag Data Setup Help

file section of Help.

Note: In some cases there may be many tags

. If you have a predefined device

Chapter 2 - Manual Network Device Configuration

If you are trying to define a device that ha s not yet been installed on the network or if you want to create a device without using Auto-Discovery, you will need to use the following procedure:

First place the mouse over the Network Devices tab in iSNMP Editor, and right-click the mouse. Select the New Device selection. You will be given the choice to either select a managed or unmanaged device.

If you are setting up a SNMP-manageable device, skip below to the Help section for the Manual

device setup - Managed.

2.1 Manual Network Device Setup- Unmanaged

1. In the Device Wizard name field, type a brief logical alias for the device.

2. In the Device Field, use the drop-down menu to select

3. Type the IP address of the unmanaged device into the IP Address field.

4. Type a brief description of the device in the Description field if you wish.

Below is a screen capture of a completed Device Wizard screen:

(Unmanaged Device).

Unmanaged device Advanced tab

The advanced tab includes advanced settings primarily concerned with how IndustrialSN MP reacts if a field device does not respond. If you are having problems communicating with a field device adjusting some of these settings might help resolve your issues. It is recommended that the settings are left at the default values unless you are asked to make changes by a iSNMP tech support engineer!

For advanced users the following is a list of definitions for the selections on the Advanced Tab:

Device Timeout (ms): This value is the amount of time allowed to complete an SNMP ge t. In situations where there might be a lot of traffic on the network, a longer time out setting might be helpful. The default setting of 500 ms has been found to be suitable for most applications.

Device Retries: After an attempt to get data has timed out, the d evice retries value is the amount of times the SNMP manager will attemp t to retrieve the data before failing.

Skip Count: This is the time that the manag er w ill wa it bef ore a tte mp ting an other GE T from a device that has failed. The time uni t i s defined in the Device timeout setting.

ms device timeout with 30 skip count =2400ms before new attempt)

Example (800

2.2 - Manual Network Device Setup- Managed

1. In the Device Wizard Name field, type a brief logical alias for the device.

2. The second field is a drop-down Device menu, which allows you to view and select from a

3. Type the new device’s address in the IP Address field.

4. Select th e appropriate SNMP access level in is the Community field.

list of predefined SNMP-manageable devices. If the network device that you are configuring is one of the predefined devices that IndustrialSNMP supports, then sele ct it from t he list and proceed to the IP Address field. If the network device that you are setting up is not part of the predefined list, then you have three choices:

a. You can simply leave the Device field blank, in w hich case you will have to create each

SNMP data tag individually (the most difficult route.)

b. You can scroll down the list and select from the list of

being the number of Ethernet ports that the device has.) For example: let’s assume that IndustrialSNMP has discovered a network switch, but it is not one of the predefined devices in the IndustrialSNMP database. If the field device happens to be a 24 port Ethernet switch, you can select the Device menu. Most Ethernet devi ces suppor t MIBII, which is an industry-standard list of SNMP “tags”. Using the generic MI B template, you should be able to have iSNMP create a large number of useful tags for the device wi thout having to create each data point individually. You can add unique system device tags to the predefined MIBII tags later. (See the SNMP Tag Setup section of Help explaining how to do this.)

c. If you have iSNMP Expert Edition you can use the MIB Template Generator to create a

unique template for the actual device you are configuring. Read the How to use

is actually the control access level that you will be usi ng when communi cating to th e networ k device. In an SNMP- manageable device, you can limit the access that an SNMP manager (such as IndustrialSNMP) can have, based on the manager software’s password level. There are generally two default “password” (community) levels; Read and Read/Write. In most SNMP devices, the default community for Read-only privileges is called “Public,” and the default community for Read/Write privileges is “Private.” Some SNMP-manageable devices can be configured to have custom levels of access. Please make sure that the community level you choose matches the device configura tion for the access privileges you expect. If you want only to limit access on a few SNMP tags, you ca n selec t the hig hest acce ss leve l for the device, and then limit the access level on each SNMP tag within Ind ustrialSNMP Editor.( See the Tag Configuration help for more details on how to limit access on a tag-by-tag basis.)

Generic 24port MIBII device

Generic x-port MIBII

from the drop-down

The SNMP community

devices (x

5. Type a brief description of the network device in the Description field. It is not necessary to

6. The sixth field is the Network Analyst selection. When the Network analyst box is selected

have a description, but in larger networks, it may help to sort out which device you are looking at in the IndustrialSNMP Editor.

iSNMP will create extra OPC tags that create derived calculations such as bandwidth utilization and device status. These Network analyst tags are available only when m onitoring a network switch. (There is detailed information about the configuration of these points in the Network Analyst Tag Set-up

Managed Device Advanced tab

The Advanced tab includes advanced settings primarily concerned with how IndustrialSN MP reacts if a field device does not respond. If you are having problems communicating with a field device adjusting some of these settings might help resolve your issues. It is recommended that the settings are left at the default values unless you are asked to make changes by a iSNMP Software tech support engineer!

Device Retries: After an attempt to get data has timed out, the d evice retries value is the amount of times the SNMP manager will attemp t to retrieve the data before failing.

Skip Count: This is the time that the manag er w ill wa it bef ore a tte mp ting an other GE T from a device that has failed. The time unit is de fined in the Device timeout setting.

Example:

(800 ms device timeout with 30 skip count =2400ms before new attempt)

Chapter 3 - Tag Configuration

There are two major types of tags that can be created within iSNMP. Polled tags are tags t hat iSNMP actively “gets” from network devi ces on a r eg ular b asis . Trap s tag s are tag s tha t iS NMP is co nfig ured to receive from devices that will not be polled, but instead will broadcast alarm messages whenever alarm conditions occur.

3.1 Polled tag Configuration

You can define your polled tags manually if you are not auto-discovering your network devices or if auto-discovery did not find an OID that you need. To manually define an SNMP OID, first highlight the network device that you want to add an SNMP tag to in the iSNMP Editor left screen frame. With the corre ct device highlighted, move your mouse to the right screen frame, right-click, and select New Item, as shown below:

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