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NPM - Device interfaces switch to "unknown"

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20 Posts
Points 40
Dentifrice replied on Wed, Dec 9 2009 1:48 PM
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Hello,

 

Scenario :

85 Cisco switches

80 sites

Several firewalls between SW server and devices

SNMPv3

 

I had a problem several weeks ago. From time to time, some devices (totally random) started to have a blinking icon with a litte grey square.  I realized then that all interfaces switched to "unknown" state. I use SNMPv3.

 

I could "List ressources" from the web interface on those devices...so that prove the snmp connection works !

But I COULDN'T do it in the System Manager (with an error about SNMP credentials not correct (that was not the case)).

The ONLY way to resolve the problem was to delete the device and add it again.

I extend the SNMP request time out to max (5000ms).

 

Never had the problem again...since today. I added 5 new devices 4 days ago. They were working fine since this morning. All of a sudden, the little grey square appear again with unknown interfaces.

 

I did some network packet sniffing and I realize that when a device starts having this problem, the polling engine try to connect to the device using SNMPv2 and community name PUBLIC (remember I use SNMPV3 with user/password). This is odd because all SNMP settings weren't changed. I took a look directly in the database too and SNMP settings are exactly the same for all devices.....I really don't know where this SNMPv2/Public settings comes from.

 

I'm really out of ideas right out. Anyone has the same problem ?

 

thank you

 

 

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57 Posts
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reheindel replied on Thu, Feb 4 2010 11:59 AM
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I have seen this about 5 times over the past few months.  I am running 9.5.1 so the latest version. 

I also concur that it appears to fall back to snmpv2, and of course it is unreachable because we have snmpv2 turned off.

Anybody else seen this?

 

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20 Posts
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Answered (Not Verified) Dentifrice replied on Sat, Feb 6 2010 2:04 PM
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Suggested by GaryP

Hello,

 

I found the way to get them back.

 

What happended is :

add new devices 

restart the server or services 

devices just added turned to unknown

Open web interface

edit devices, switch them to SNMPv2 (you will receive an error telling credentials don't works, click yes)

edit again, switch back to SNMPv3

Open Orion services manager

Stop everything, start everything

wait couple of minutes

Voila, devices are now ok

 

I can reproduce this every time 

 

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88 Posts
Points 251
SolarWinds Certified Professional
GaryP replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 6:59 AM
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I'm having a very similar issue over here:

http://thwack.com/forums/t/22440.aspx

Wonder if it's connected? All  my devices are monitored via snmp v2c so it's not the fall-back issue you describe.

Gary Parker - Network & Security Team, Loughborough University, UK

Orion NPM 10.0 SLX, SLX Poller, NCM 6.0 DL3000

 

 SCP1385

 

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88 Posts
Points 251
SolarWinds Certified Professional
GaryP replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 7:41 AM
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Hey Dentifrice, just tried your suggested workflow (although in my case I changed from v2 to v1 and back again) and my devices are back as normal now. Good to know there's a workaround for this issue but it needs looking into as a proper bug. I can't go restarting my pollers every time I want to suspend monitoring a device.

Gary Parker - Network & Security Team, Loughborough University, UK

Orion NPM 10.0 SLX, SLX Poller, NCM 6.0 DL3000

 

 SCP1385

 

  • | Post Points: 3

20 Posts
Points 40
Dentifrice replied on Mon, Feb 8 2010 7:57 AM
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Hi,

I have a case with technical support, I will update this topic as soon as I have new information.

thanks

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88 Posts
Points 251
SolarWinds Certified Professional
GaryP replied on Tue, Feb 9 2010 5:15 AM
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Hmm...I'm noticing more and more of my servers are now reporting their NICs and volumes as being 'unknown'. This is getting to be a real problem as it's actually quite hard to get a report telling you what devices are in this state! It doesn't alert you when you a device goes into this state, from what I can see.

The devices are all accessible via SNMP and ICMP so they aren't flagged as 'down' and if I go into System Manager and manually poll any of the volumes or interfaces it works fine and plots the data on the graphs but never polls it again.

Any word on your support ticket, dentifrice?

Gary Parker - Network & Security Team, Loughborough University, UK

Orion NPM 10.0 SLX, SLX Poller, NCM 6.0 DL3000

 

 SCP1385

 

  • | Post Points: 3

20 Posts
Points 40
Dentifrice replied on Tue, Feb 9 2010 7:49 AM
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They will send my debug logs to the dev team to look further into it

 

 

  • | Post Points: 1
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