Configure Basic Settings for a Custom Poller Collection

The name for the Custom Poller Collection configuration.

The name can be up to 50 alphanumeric characters. Spaces are permitted. The following special characters (<, >, ", ', &, /, \, #) are not permitted.

Enables you to specify the method you want Custom Poller to use to collect MIB information.

• Select Instance when you want to collect information for a small number of MIB instances or do any of the following:

  • Configure Thresholds or Comparison Maps that map polled MIB Expression values to States and optionally causes incidents to be generated.
  • Include State changes in calculations for the source Node's Status.
  • Include Status for the associated Custom Node Collections.
  • Monitor Custom Polled Instances for the MIB information collected.

• Select Bulk when you want to collect information for a large number of MIB instances. This method is useful for generating large amounts of data that can be exported to comma-separated values (CSV) files for customized reports or for use with NNM iSPI Performance for Metrics.

  NNMi bypasses Custom Polled Instance discovery and simply polls all instances of the configured MIB Variables for the nodes specified in the Custom Poller policies that use a Bulk Custom Poller Collection. This means that NNMi does not create Custom Polled Instances for the MIB information collected.

  The Bulk Custom Poller Collection has the following limitations:

  • Expression processing only uses raw counter values, not delta values

  • The following features do not work:

    • Filtering
    • Delta calculation for counters to Display variable
    • Display Filter
    • State mapping
    • Comparison table mapping
    • Thresholds (count-based or time-based)
    • Status
    • Incident generation

The MIB Expression value can be either a MIB Expression or a MIB OID. Use the Variables tab to specify each MIB Expression or MIB OID from which you want to collect information.

Affect Node Status

Instance Custom Poller Collection Type only.

If enabled , NNMi uses the Status of a Custom Node Collection to affect the associated topology Node's Status.

To understand how the topology Node Status is affected, you must understand the relationship between a Custom Node Collection and a topology Node. Click here for more information:

As shown in the following diagram, a Custom Node Collection identifies each topology node that has at least one associated Custom Poller Collection and Custom Poller Policy pair.

If enabled , NNMi exports the Custom Poller Collection to a comma-separated values (CSV) file that is written to the following directory:

Windows:

%NnmDataDir%\shared\nnm\databases\custompoller\export\final

Linux:

$NnmDataDir/shared/nnm/databases/custompoller/export/final

When exporting Custom Poller Collections, note the following:

• NNMi includes the following information in the CSV file:

  • Node UUID
  • IP address
  • Node Name (Host Name of the Node)
  • The MIB expression or the numeric Object Identifier of the MIB variable
  • Time stamp (in milliseconds)
  • Poll interval (in milliseconds)
  • MIB Instance (number used to identify the row in the MIB table)
  • Metric value
  • Display Attribute
  • Filter Value
• By default, NNMi accumulates the data and writes the metrics to the CSV file, one metric per Custom Poller Collection instance, every 5 minutes.
• NNMi names each CSV file using the Custom Poller Collection name, appended with the timestamp (yyyymmddHHmmssSSS).
• NNMi monitors the custompoller directory to ensure that the Custom Poller metrics do not fill the disk. By default, after the custompoller directory has consumed more than one gigabyte of disk space, NNMi removes the oldest metric files as it writes new files to the disk.
• If you have a High Availability (HA) environment, NNMi places the CSV files on the shared disk.

• If you are using Application Failover, NNMi replicates these files to the failover system.  

• Export to Network Performance Server (NPS) only. If you change the name of a Custom Poller Collection or one of the MIB Variables associated with a Custom Poller Collection, NPS removes all of the historical reporting data related to the change as follows:

  Name Change	Historical Data Removed
  Custom Poller Collection	All of the data associated with the original Custom Poller Collection
  MIB Variable	All of the data associated with the original MIB Variable name

If disabled , NNMi does not export the Custom Poller Collection information.

If enabled , NNMi exports the Custom Poller Collection in compressed format and appends *.gz to the *.csv file suffix.

If you have more than one Custom Poller Collection with the same name, note the following:

• If at least one of those Custom Poller Collections has Compress Export File enabled, NNMi compresses all of the exported Custom Poller Collections with the same name.
• NNMi writes the Custom Poller Collection information to the same CSV file.

If Disabled , NNMi does not compress the CSV file.

Instance Custom Poller Collection Type only.

If Enabled , NNMi generates an incident when a Threshold (defined on the Thresholds tab) is reached or exceeded, or when a specified MIB returns a value that causes the Node's State to be other than Normal (defined on the Comparison Maps tab).

To generate incidents for the Custom Node Collection, select Custom Node Collection.

To generate incidents for Custom Polled Instances, select Custom Polled Instance.

If disabled , NNMi does not generate any incidents for Custom Node Collections or Custom Polled Instances.

To understand how Custom Node Collection incidents are generated, it is important to understand the relationship between a Custom Poller Policy and a Custom Poller Collection. Click here for more information:

• Each Custom Poller Collection is associated with a Custom Poller Policy that identifies the Node Group to which the policy and collection apply.

• The results of each Custom Poller Collection and Custom Poller Policy pair appear in one row of the Monitoring workspace's Custom Node Collection view. A Custom Node Collection identifies each topology node that has at least one associated Custom Poller Collection and Custom Poller Policy pair.

  Multiple Custom Poller Collection and Custom Poller Policy pairs can be associated with the same Node Group. Results appear as multiple rows for each Node Group member in the Custom Node Collection view.

• Click here to view a diagram of this relationship.

  

When generating incidents for Custom Node Collections, note the following:

• If a Custom Node Collection meets or exceeds a configured threshold, an incident is generated for the associated Custom Node Collection.

• NNMi generates only one incident per Custom Node Collection. This means if multiple instances within the Custom Node Collection have a Status other than Normal, NNMi generates only one incident using the details for the highest severity instance.

• If multiple instances within the Custom Node Collection have a Status other than Normal and more than one of them has the highest severity, NNMi selects one of the Custom Node Collection instances to generate the incident.

• The most severe incident status is then propagated from the Custom Node Collection to the corresponding node object.
• If the Custom Node Collection with the most severe status returns to normal, NNMi closes the corresponding incident. If another instance in the Custom Poller Collection has a status other than normal, NNMi generates a new incident using the next highest severity.

To understand how Custom Polled Instance incidents are generated, it is important to understand how Custom Polled Instances are generated. Click here for more information:

• The first time a MIB Expression is validated with discovery information, the results appear in a Custom Polled Instance object. A Custom Polled Instance represents the results of a MIB expression when it is evaluated against a node. The Custom Polled Instance is updated whenever a change in State occurs and includes the most recent polled value that caused the State to change.

• A node can be associated with multiple Custom Polled Instances when its associated MIB expression includes MIBs that have multiple instances per node. For example, the associated MIB expression might perform a calculation using the ifInOctets and ifOutOctets MIB values. Using the MIB Filter and MIB Filter Variable specified, NNMi calculates these values for each interface that meets the filter criteria and that is associated with a node in the Custom Poller Collection.

• Click here to view a diagram of this relationship.

  

When generating incidents for Custom Polled Instances, note the following:

• The Source Object is the Custom Polled Instance and the Source Node is the Node associated with the specified Custom Node Collection.
• If the Status of the Custom Polled Instance incident changes from Critical to Major, Minor, or Warning, NNMi cancels the Critical incident and replaces it with the incident that has a Status of Major, Minor, or Warning
• If the Status of the Custom Polled Instance Incident changes from Major, Minor, or Warning to Critical, the current incident is canceled and replaced by the incident that has a Critical Status.
• When the Status of the Custom Polled Instance changes to Normal, the Custom Polled Incident is Closed.
• If a Custom Poller Policy's Active State becomes Inactive, NNMi deletes any Custom Polled Instances associated with the Custom Poller Policy and Closes any associated Custom Polled Instance incidents.

Applies only if Generate Incident is   Enabled.

Specifies the Source Object for the incident.

• Select Custom Node Collection to identify the Custom Node Collection as the Source Object for which the incident is generated.

  NNMi generates one of the following incidents:

  • CustomPollCritical
  • CustomPollMajor
  • CustomPollMinor
  • CustomPollWarning

• Select Custom Polled Instance to identify the Custom Polled Instance as the Source Object from which the incident is generated.

  NNMi generates a CustomPolledInstanceOutOfRange incident.

The MIB Filter Variable is the MIB variable value you want to use as a filter to determine which instances of the MIB expression to Custom Poll. If you specify a MIB Filter Variable, you must also specify a MIB Filter (value). For example, because a node can have multiple interfaces, MIB expressions containing interface information have multiple instances and require you to use a MIB Filter Variable and MIB Filter (value) to specify which interfaces you want NNMi to poll. You might use a MIB Filter Variable of ifIndex and a MIB Filter (value) of 1. In this example, NNMi creates a Polled Instance for each interface with an (interface index) ifIndex value of 1 in the Node Group or Interface Group specified by the associated Custom Poller Policy. See "Create a Policy" for more information about Custom Poller Policies.

Valid types for MIB Filter Variables include the following:

• Integer
• Unsigned Integer
• Gauge
• Octet String

• IpAddress (IPv4 only)

• INTEGER
• UNSIGNED INTEGER
• GAUGE
• OCTET STRING

• IpAddress (IPv4 only)

  Note The MIB Filter Variable must be a MIB variable that has multiple instances (Table Entry MIB) and that can be applied to all of the MIB variables used in the Custom Poller Collection.

Click the  icon to open the MIB Tree and select the MIB OID you want to use as this filter variable.

When using MIB Filter Variables, note the following:

• If you do not see a MIB that you recently loaded, close the Custom Poller Collection form, wait 1 minute for NNMi to cache the new MIB information. Then open the MIB Tree again.
• The combination of the Custom Poller Collection name and MIB variable name must not exceed 90 characters.

• To remove an unwanted MIB Filter Variable:

  1. Delete any MIB Filter Values from all Policies associated with the Custom Poller Collection.
  2. Edit the Custom Poller Collection to remove the MIB Filter Variable.