Open Source Network Monitoring Tools Shaga Shivaram Krishna Tools Studied Nagios OpenNMS Spiceworks
CERTIFICATE This is to certify that Mr. Shaga Shivaram Krishna, pursuing Integrated M.Sc. course at Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur with Mathematics and Computing as major subject has undertaken a project as an intern at the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT), Hyderabad from 8 th of May to 9 th of July, 2012. He was assigned the project Open Source Network Monitoring Tools for monitoring MPLS nodes under the guidance of the INFINET (Indian Financial Network) Department of IDRBT. The project work is a research study, which has been successfully completed as per the set objectives. We wish him all the best in all him endeavours. N.P. Dhavale (Project Guide) Deputy General Manager INFINET and Services IDRBT, Hyderabad 1 P a g e
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I would like to express my sincere gratitude to the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology (IDRBT) and particularly Dr. N. P. Dhavale, (DGM, INFINET and Services) who was my guide in this project. I would not hesitate to add that this short stint in IDRBT has added a different facet to my life as this is a unique organisation being a combination of academics, research, technology, communication services, crucial applications, etc., and at the same time performing roles as an arm of regulation, spread of technology, facilitator for implementing technology in banking and non-banking systems, playing a role of an NGO (without being one) and many more varied activities. I am extremely grateful to Dr. N. P. Dhavale for his advice, innovative suggestions and supervision. I thank him for giving me the opportunity to work on a project which has a very direct impact on the existing network of the current banking system. I am thankful to the staff of INFINET department at IDRBT for helping me to get familiar with the working of various services. They gave me a chance to study the application and its impact from different perspectives. I am thankful to my college, IIT Kharagpur for giving me this golden opportunity to work in a high-end research institute like IDRBT. I am thankful for IDRBT for providing such an amazing platform for students to work in real application oriented research. Finally, I thank one and all who made this project successful either directly or indirectly. I am very thankful to Ms. Anuradha madam and Mr. Sri Hari sir with whom I worked throughout my stint at IDRBT and the project was possible only with their cooperation. Shaga Shivaram Krishna Project Trainee INFINET Department IDRBT, Hyderabad 2 P a g e
Contents CERTIFICATE 1 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT 2 INTRODUCTION 4 MPLS NETWORK 4 INDIAN FINANCIAL NETWORK [INFINET] 5 OVERVIEW OF THE PROJECT 5 OBJECTIVE 6 OPEN SOURCE TOOLS STUDIED 6 LICENCED TOOLS STUDIED 6 PARAMETERS TO BE MONITORED 7 DETAILS OF MY WORK 8 TOOL DESCRIPTION 8 OPENNMS: 8 NAGIOS: 9 SPICEWORKS: 10 DELIVERABLES 11 TOOL COMPARISON CHART 11 CONCLUSION 12 3 P a g e
Open Source Network Monitoring tools for monitoring MPLS nodes Introduction The number of RBI locations, the member banks and their respective branch locations associated with them is very high. Initially they were connected through leased lines. But recently it is shifted to Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS). MPLS Network MPLS is a mechanism in high-performance telecommunications networks that directs data from one network node to the next based on short path labels rather than long network addresses, avoiding complex lookups in a routing table. The MPLS network was an improvement over the leased line network. It is highly scalable, protocol agnostic, highly accessible data carrying mechanism. It improves efficient use of resources and enhances performance of the network. Sample MPLS Network Topology 4 P a g e
Indian Financial Network [INFINET] The whole MPLS network is being monitored by the Indian Financial Network [INFINET] team at IDRBT. It is the communication backbone for the Indian Banking and Financial Sector. There are a number of banking service providers and a number of branches to each of them and they obviously need to be connected with each other. It is a closed user group network for the exclusive use of member banks and financial institutions. All inter-bank applications like RTGS, Delivery vs Payment, Government Transactions, etc. are dependent on INFINET for communication. Overview of the Project The INFINET network is pretty complex and hence constantly monitoring the network is challenging. There is a high need to constantly monitor the network for slow or failing components and notify the network administrator in case of outages. Some of the parameters which are supposed to be monitored are Ping Test, CRC Errors, Round Trip Time and Latency Bandwidth Utilization CPU and Memory Utilization Protocol Status SMS and Email alerting system Monitoring Configuration changes 5 P a g e
Objective The main objective of the project was to analyse and explore the features available in various open source network monitoring tools and choose the best tools of them which can monitor all the required parameters in the best possible way. A total of 13 tools were studied by our team. 8 of them are open source while the other 5 are licenced. The licenced tools were studied to get a basic idea about the features and to compare their working with the features available in the open source tools. None of these tools can monitor all the required parameters. Some tools were best used for some specific parameters. Keeping all these things in the mind, the final set of tools have to be selected which are best suited to monitor the parameters. Open source tools studied Argus Cacti Nagios OpenNMS Zenoss Zabbix NetDisco OpenQRM Licenced tools studied NetFlow Analyzer OpManager PRTG Spiceworks (Freeware) Frame Flow 6 P a g e
Parameters to be monitored Report Format for Monitoring MPLS Network using Key Parameters Sl no Parameter Description 1 Device Availability ( MPLS CPE and Crypto Server ) Threshold Value Periodicity a Devices that is not reachable for more than 5 minutes Executive Report b CPU Utilization in % >70% c Memory Utilization in % >70% d Mean Time Between Failures One Month Monthly e Mean Time To Repair 4 hours 2 Interface Availability and Performance a Interface not reachable for more than 5 minutes. >5 Minutes Executive Report BGP Protocol Status >5 Minutes HSRP Protocol Status >5 Minutes Physical I/O Status >5 Minutes 3 Performance (Link, NNI Link and Crypto Server Link) a Link Availability <99.9% Executive Report Link Utilization >70% b Packet loss % >0.1% c CRC Errors >1% d Round Trip Time >100 msec e Latency >70 msec (Avg) f Jitter Sensitive Please Note: The report format may changes as per the requirement at IDRBT. 7 P a g e
Details of my work Initially I was assigned to study and explore the features of an open source network monitoring tool OpenNMS. But eventually I studied two more tools namely Nagios and Spiceworks, of which the former is an open source and the latter is licenced software but is available in freeware version. Tool Description OpenNMS: This is a very powerful tool and a lot of features are available in it. With a user-friendly interface and a large set of features, it is undoubtedly one of the best open source tools available. And moreover it best suits for the monitoring requirements at INFINET for monitoring the MPLS nodes. The software s features are extensively studied and after a final discussion with our team, we have decided to include it in the final integration mainly because of its features like alarms, alerts and customized report generation. However, it has some drawbacks in it. Its interface is very heavy. It is not possible to add any additional features to it. The features which are required and are not available in it are taken care by other tools like Nagios and Zabbix. 8 P a g e
Nagios: This open source tool is a very basic tool with a friendly user interface. It has a very basic set of features but has the capability of adding plugins to it for additional features. It gets updated frequently and a huge number of plugins are available. Its interface is very light. We have decided to use it in the final integration mainly for viewing the basic information about the devices it is monitoring. However, working with it is a bit complicated. For adding new devices or modifying existing ones, one has to edit the configuration file accordingly and can become complicated with the increase in the number of devices. 9 P a g e
Spiceworks: This tool is free but not open source. Network monitoring is only a part of the software but very useful. Its best features include the network topology mapping feature and has a capability to link itself to other network monitoring tools. It is used in the final integration mainly to link all the tools at one place. However, it doesn t have the capability of adding any new features. 10 P a g e
Deliverables All the Features of the network monitoring tools were successfully explored and analysed. They were tested on some of the nodes present at the INFINET network and were found to be working as expected. All the required parameters were being monitored, the notifications being sent by email and SMS, the report being generated at regular intervals and any configuring changes being updated. Moreover, all of these are done automatically without any manual intervention. The final chart which explains which tool can monitor which parameter can be seen below. Tool Comparison chart 11 P a g e
Conclusion At the final stage, our team has decided to recommend only four of the tools as they monitor the parameters in the best possible way. Nagios Zabbix OpenNMS Spiceworks The tools have been installed in a dedicated server and are currently running and available for usage. 12 P a g e