SNMP network managers

An SNMP Network Manager is a program that asks for information from master agents and displays that information. You can use most SNMP Network Managers to select the items to monitor and the form in which to display the information.

An SNMP Network Manager typically provides the following features:
  • Remote monitoring of managed components
  • Low-impact sampling of the performance of a managed component
  • Correlation of managed component metrics with related system and network metrics
  • Graphical presentation of information
Many hardware and network services have created SNMP Network Managers. For example:
  • CA-Unicenter
  • Hewlett-Packard Open View
  • NetView®/6000
  • Novell Network Management System
  • Sun Solstice
  • Tivoli® TME 10 NetView
SNMP Network Managers use a connectionless protocol, which means that each exchange between an SNMP Network Manager and a master agent is a separate transaction. A connectionless protocol allows the SNMP Network Manager to perform the following actions:
  • Gather information without putting an excessive load on the network
  • Function in an environment where heavy traffic can cause network problems
Most SNMP Network Managers provide a graphical user interface (GUI) such as the one that the following figure illustrates. With this SNMP Network Manager, you select a node to monitor and then choose specific information from a menu.
Figure 1: SNMP Network Manager example

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The following code shows how an SNMP Network Manager might display information about the databases on a network. In this example, the network has only one database. 
Feb 17 1999 [ smoke ] : RDBMS-MIB.rdbmsDbTable
KEY = 72000003
rdbmsDbName = CustomerData
rdbmsDbName.72000003 = AnotherData
rdbmsDbPrivateMibOID = 1.3.6.1.4.1.893
rdbmsDbVendorName = IBM Corporation
rdbmsDbName = CustomerData
rdbmsDbContact = John Doe
The following code shows how a different SNMP Network Manager could display the same information. 
rdbmsDbPrivateMibOID.72000003 = 1.3.6.1.4.1.893
rdbmsDbVendorName.72000003 = IBM Corporation
rdbmsDbName.72000003 = CustomerData
rdbmsDbContact.72000003 = John Doe
In addition to text, an SNMP Network Manager might also display graphs or charts, as the following figure illustrates.
Figure 2: Example of monitoring information

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