Is anyone using Tail-f software or know anything similar? We are looking for a solution that is vendor agnostic. Can do simple command like show interface so even non-network techs and CSR's can get basic is the port up or down type stats without having to directly login to the network.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com> wrote:
Is anyone using Tail-f software or know anything similar? We are looking for a solution that is vendor agnostic. Can do simple command like show
I've only read of this, but my understanding is the Tail-F product is for configuration management and supporting provisioning automations anyways, monitoring configs sure. As far as I know they cannot monitor or show network operational status, so your use case may not overlap with their capabilities, and perhaps, what you are likely suggesting is something that unfortunately doesn't exist yet: a tool for both configuring and observing a detailed operational state of the network devices in a vendor-agnostic way. However, for simple bandwidth statistics and port Up/Down; for most devices, this information is available through SNMP based management tools. Basic Up/Down and statistics could generally be gathered by any good SNMP-based NMS / network monitoring product, there are thousands of these, or OSS such as Cacti, Zenoss, and proprietary ones such as HP OpenView, SolarWinds, InterMapper, Whatsup; also, just about every major network device vendor has their element management system. Various NMS can also be configured to run some selected code or offer up a GUI command for running a snmpwalk against the ifOperStatus or ifIn/Out Octets.
interface so even non-network techs and CSR's can get basic is the port up or down type stats without having to directly login to the network. -- -JH
Tail-F's ConfD can operate as a front-end CLI and do the things he wants it to do in an operational sense but I would agree it may not be the easiest to use tool for simply monitoring and grabbing interface state/statistics. It's fairly flexible and can do a lot of abstracted things through its ConfD element but there is some backend work to make it happen. Not as much as doing it from scratch but still a bit of work. It can abstract different device CLIs so they all look the same and use the same commands and you can extend the CLI to do custom things as well if you want. The whole system is fairly powerful and very extensibe. There are monitoring elements built into it and It could be a full blown monitoring system, really just depends on the scale you need and how much work you want to put into it. Phil On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com> wrote:
Is anyone using Tail-f software or know anything similar? We are looking for a solution that is vendor agnostic. Can do simple command like show
I've only read of this, but my understanding is the Tail-F product is for configuration management and supporting provisioning automations anyways, monitoring configs sure. As far as I know they cannot monitor or show network operational status, so your use case may not overlap with their capabilities, and perhaps, what you are likely suggesting is something that unfortunately doesn't exist yet: a tool for both configuring and observing a detailed operational state of the network devices in a vendor-agnostic way.
However, for simple bandwidth statistics and port Up/Down; for most devices, this information is available through SNMP based management tools.
Basic Up/Down and statistics could generally be gathered by any good SNMP-based NMS / network monitoring product, there are thousands of these, or OSS such as Cacti, Zenoss, and proprietary ones such as HP OpenView, SolarWinds, InterMapper, Whatsup; also, just about every major network device vendor has their element management system.
Various NMS can also be configured to run some selected code or offer up a GUI command for running a snmpwalk against the ifOperStatus or ifIn/Out Octets.
interface so even non-network techs and CSR's can get basic is the port up or down type stats without having to directly login to the network. -- -JH
I am aware that you can see if a port is up or down through SNMP. I guess that was a bad example. I want to see the entire output of a show interface command. For example, we have multiple types of access networks (GPON, DSL, Cisco ethernet switches). Some of the show interface commands are fairly basic, but others like on a DSL port show much more information like sync rate, signal loss, etc. The only way to get this information on some platforms is to run the show interface command for CLI I believe, or login to the access platform's GUI interface. Both of these task aren't so easy when you are dealing with multiple access platforms. On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 3:15 PM, Phil Bedard <bedard.phil@gmail.com> wrote:
Tail-F's ConfD can operate as a front-end CLI and do the things he wants it to do in an operational sense but I would agree it may not be the easiest to use tool for simply monitoring and grabbing interface state/statistics. It's fairly flexible and can do a lot of abstracted things through its ConfD element but there is some backend work to make it happen. Not as much as doing it from scratch but still a bit of work. It can abstract different device CLIs so they all look the same and use the same commands and you can extend the CLI to do custom things as well if you want.
The whole system is fairly powerful and very extensibe. There are monitoring elements built into it and It could be a full blown monitoring system, really just depends on the scale you need and how much work you want to put into it.
Phil
On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com> wrote:
Is anyone using Tail-f software or know anything similar? We are looking for a solution that is vendor agnostic. Can do simple command like show
I've only read of this, but my understanding is the Tail-F product is for configuration management and supporting provisioning automations anyways, monitoring configs sure. As far as I know they cannot monitor or show network operational status, so your use case may not overlap with their capabilities, and perhaps, what you are likely suggesting is something that unfortunately doesn't exist yet: a tool for both configuring and observing a detailed operational state of the network devices in a vendor-agnostic way.
However, for simple bandwidth statistics and port Up/Down; for most devices, this information is available through SNMP based management tools.
Basic Up/Down and statistics could generally be gathered by any good SNMP-based NMS / network monitoring product, there are thousands of these, or OSS such as Cacti, Zenoss, and proprietary ones such as HP OpenView, SolarWinds, InterMapper, Whatsup; also, just about every major network device vendor has their element management system.
Various NMS can also be configured to run some selected code or offer up a GUI command for running a snmpwalk against the ifOperStatus or ifIn/Out Octets.
interface so even non-network techs and CSR's can get basic is the port up or down type stats without having to directly login to the network. -- -JH
On 11/02/2014 03:56 PM, Colton Conor wrote:
Some of the show interface commands are fairly basic, but others like on a DSL port show much more information like sync rate, signal loss, etc.
Yes, the information in SNMP is pretty well spread out, because a SNMP get request returns a single value. SO you have to find all the OIDs that return the information you want to see. Simple but sometimes very, very tedious. You then wrap your data collection in a application/webpage that displays it. Vendor agnostic. Not turn-key without spending lots and lots and lots of money. Another option: have you tried using Expect?
Conor, Tail-f will give you a global view of your network configurations, and will keep the local database in sync with the devices. This gives you the ability to search and update config across devices. If you want to see the live status, then you can compile an snmp mib and attach that to the device, so your team can see both config and status via a single CLI. Really though, it's about service provisioning and orchestration across multiple vendors, but there can be a fair amount of work there depending on what you are trying to achieve. There is a also a REST interface that makes it pretty simple to access anything in the database and present it in a web page. Cheers Pete Sent from my iPhone
On 2 Nov 2014, at 23:58, Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com> wrote:
I am aware that you can see if a port is up or down through SNMP. I guess that was a bad example. I want to see the entire output of a show interface command. For example, we have multiple types of access networks (GPON, DSL, Cisco ethernet switches). Some of the show interface commands are fairly basic, but others like on a DSL port show much more information like sync rate, signal loss, etc. The only way to get this information on some platforms is to run the show interface command for CLI I believe, or login to the access platform's GUI interface. Both of these task aren't so easy when you are dealing with multiple access platforms.
On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 3:15 PM, Phil Bedard <bedard.phil@gmail.com> wrote:
Tail-F's ConfD can operate as a front-end CLI and do the things he wants it to do in an operational sense but I would agree it may not be the easiest to use tool for simply monitoring and grabbing interface state/statistics. It's fairly flexible and can do a lot of abstracted things through its ConfD element but there is some backend work to make it happen. Not as much as doing it from scratch but still a bit of work. It can abstract different device CLIs so they all look the same and use the same commands and you can extend the CLI to do custom things as well if you want.
The whole system is fairly powerful and very extensibe. There are monitoring elements built into it and It could be a full blown monitoring system, really just depends on the scale you need and how much work you want to put into it.
Phil
On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 1:19 PM, Jimmy Hess <mysidia@gmail.com> wrote:
On Sun, Nov 2, 2014 at 11:04 AM, Colton Conor <colton.conor@gmail.com> wrote:
Is anyone using Tail-f software or know anything similar? We are looking for a solution that is vendor agnostic. Can do simple command like show
I've only read of this, but my understanding is the Tail-F product is for configuration management and supporting provisioning automations anyways, monitoring configs sure. As far as I know they cannot monitor or show network operational status, so your use case may not overlap with their capabilities, and perhaps, what you are likely suggesting is something that unfortunately doesn't exist yet: a tool for both configuring and observing a detailed operational state of the network devices in a vendor-agnostic way.
However, for simple bandwidth statistics and port Up/Down; for most devices, this information is available through SNMP based management tools.
Basic Up/Down and statistics could generally be gathered by any good SNMP-based NMS / network monitoring product, there are thousands of these, or OSS such as Cacti, Zenoss, and proprietary ones such as HP OpenView, SolarWinds, InterMapper, Whatsup; also, just about every major network device vendor has their element management system.
Various NMS can also be configured to run some selected code or offer up a GUI command for running a snmpwalk against the ifOperStatus or ifIn/Out Octets.
interface so even non-network techs and CSR's can get basic is the port up or down type stats without having to directly login to the network. -- -JH
participants (5)
-
Colton Conor -
Jimmy Hess -
Peter teStrake -
Phil Bedard -
Stephen Satchell