Brocade Virtual Fabric SNMP monitoring

Checkmk Exchange
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1

Hi all,
we have several brocade switches in our environment. However, they need migration into virtual fabrics. (default is 128 which is perfectly working)
Checkmk is able to scan the default fabric but there is no option to define, using snmp, other fabrics to be queried. The snmp user on the brocade switch has access to all fabrics.

So how can we define fabrics in the snmp check?
Is it possible to just scan them all and put the fabric number in the service name.

some usefull info:
https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/fibre-channel-networking/fabric-os/fabric-os-mib/9-1-x/understanding-brocade-snmp/support-for-virtual-fabrics.html

switch# snmpwalk -v3 -a MD5 -A passpass -x AES128 -u admin1 -X passpass -n VF:4
10.20.8.17 1.3.6.1.4.1.1588.2.1.2.1.5.1 -l authPriv

The VF:4 in this example is nowhere to be defined.

many thanks

2

The option -n defines the SNMPv3 context of the query.

This is currently not supported by Checkmk.

Maybe something for https://ideas.checkmk.com/.

3

I’m certainly not the first having this problem, reading your message.
I’ll provide the feedback via the ideas. Hopefully a quick fix can be provided.

many thanks

all upvotes welcome!

4

found something by accident.

SNMPv3 contexts to use in requests
Setup > Agents > SNMP > rules > SNMPv3> contexts to use in requests

we will give it a try and create some rules

1 Like
5

I also learn something new every day.
It looks like you need a separate host for each context.

6

tested and working.
You can add multiple contexts per rule.
post can be closed.

7

Hello, we have a similar problem that not all ports are displayed. In our case ports 1-47 are missing, only 48 to 63 are recognized by CheckMK via SNMPv3. Could you kindly send us a screenshot of the rule as it is configured in your system.

Best regards
Lucas Willecke

8

Make sure you put “vf:xx” in your context id’s to retrieve. Do not just add the number of the virtual fabric.
depending of the speed of your network, increase the timeout value of the snmp-call
make sure your snmp user on the brocade is allowed to see/query each vf individually.

9

Hello back and sorry for the late response. We are working on our CheckMK and had several problems to fix and now I had time for this issue. I’ve managed to get the other Ports (1-47) with all stats which the collegue needed, but now I have another really strange problem. Im not not able anymore to get informations from CPU and RAM with this specific rules. If I build one rule with all “SNMP Sections allow”, I can see them, but not the Ports anymore. Is there a solution for this?

for_checkmk_1
for_checkmk_11280Ă—648 43.7 KB

10

I have tryed it with the brocade_sys service. But this didnt helped me, either with the VF:128 which is the basic switch.

11

Hi Lucas,
it is important you make the neccesary users on the brocade switch. I didn’t do that config, but our storage engineer had a lot of work doing so. It was on multiple places and you have to make sure the user has access to all the VF’s.

do some manual snmp requests to see what is going over the wire.
your config in check_mk looks ok

1 Like
12

Hello back,

thanks for the tips. I will give this to my collegue and discuss it with him. Maybe we will find a solution for this. If we found one, I will write it down here, so that anyone with a same problem will have a solution, that could help :slight_smile: