Since this topic has come up several times over the last few weeks, I’ve decided to blog about creating custom report templates in Denika, our MRTG Performance Trender.

The first request was for monitoring Sensatronics temperature probes.  And then today we received the following request on our forums:

“Are there any way to make denika support mibs of ZTE or Huawei? Can i edit the template by some way, or some other method is available?”

And the answer is Yes, you can create new device and report templates with Denika. For Sensatronics, ZTE, Huawei, and other vendors also.  If they support SNMP, we can monitor them.  All you need is the IP Address, OID string, and the SNMP Credential for the device.
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Recently Mark Leary, wrote a blog about the “Top Ten IOS Services You Should Be Using Now!” In the blog he talks about some of the key high-value IOS services that can go unnoticed and unused by network operators.

Plixer International can help you put a number of these services to work for you by providing the best network analysis and reporting tools available on the market today.

We have talked for a long time about the benefits of using Cisco IPSLA as a proactive method of reliably measuring network performance. Raul Duran wrote a series of blogs talking about the use of IPSLA operations, and believes that IPSLA should be a part of every Network Administrator’s toolbox. Using our SNMP Performance and Trending tool, data can be retrieved and trended, enabling users to graph performance over time.

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Our development team has been working hard and we are pleased to announce the release of Plixer Tools 8.0.0. What’s Plixer Tools you ask? We’ve combined Denika, Logalot, WebNM, and Flowalyzer into a single installer to provide better integration with Scrutinizer.

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OK, let’s say you’ve decided to live a healthier life. You’re exercising regularly, stopped getting drunk every night, and you’re eating healthy. You’ve been eating more salads, almost cut out red meat, and even eating annoyingly healthy desserts, if any. Read more »

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“Why don’t I see my VLAN traffic?”  was the question one of our customers asked me the other day. Although other Cisco models were exporting flows properly, it seemed that all of his Cisco 7600s were under reporting traffic.

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If you use both our Scrutinizer NetFlow Analyzer and Denika Performance Trender tools to help meet your network management goals, you can integrate some of the Denika functionality into Scrutinizer.

This integration can include a link directly from the Status page of Scrutinizer to the Denika reports for a device. You can also use Denika reports in Scrutinizer maps.

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I found something interesting on the Cisco Systems web site. According to Cisco’s forecast, global IP traffic in 2008 stands at more than 10 exabytes per month and will more than quadruple to approach 44 exabytes per month in 2012.

I thought Cisco’s forecast was interesting because I’m not one of those who believes the Internet is going to crash. I do believe that Nathan is right about network forecasting being important.

Anyway, I got to thinking that this topic was worth blogging about again. The Cisco article inspired me to go check out our Internet connection. We added network traffic forecasting to Denika years ago:

Notice you can take you mouse and zoom in on a time frame above to get more details:

Denika can forecast on anything (e.g. database response times, temperature, Cisco CBQoS, etc.). It is not limited to SNMP OIDs.

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Monitoring with CBQoS (Class-Based Quality of Service) in addition to NetFlow and IPSLA on a network can provide additional insight into an organization’s critical applications utilization. As more companies deploy VoIP and video conferencing CBQoS can be utilized to show how these applications are delivered across an infrastructure with defined policies. CBQoS is a Cisco feature set that is part of IOS 12.4(4)T and above, and is available at no additional cost. The QoS statistics provided by CBQoS are made available via SNMP polling and give detailed information about the defined QoS policies applied to interfaces and class-based traffic patterns.

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Yet again, it’s raining here in Maine. I think it has been raining for four days straight and now I’m beginning to get a little antsy to see some sunshine.

Usually, I don’t watch the Weather Channel. I just take every day as it comes and adapt to the weather. If I wake up and it’s rainy and cold, I wear something warmer. If it’s bright and sunny, I wear a t-shirt.
I’m simple that way.

But when we have a run in weather like this, I ask myself: “When is this going to end?!?”
That’s when I break out of my normal habit and check the forecast for the next couple days. I must admit, there is a sense of peace knowing that the rain SHOULD end by tomorrow night.

Much like monitoring the weather, you can use SNMP to monitor your daily, weekly or even monthly traffic statistics to help you project what tomorrow may bring.

Notice the Port Utilization graph shown above: Not only does it provide statistics based on current data collected, it also estimates future projections based on your current trend using those strike lines.

With limiting budgets, it’s more difficult to rationalize spending on a new DS3 circuit for the company. However, network performance monitoring applications, such as Denika, make life easy by forecasting network growth, so that you can see a problem before it ever begins.

Think about this: Would you feel better knowing that tomorrow was always going to be a bright and sunny day?

Oftentimes, when I’m running around the country setting up Flow Analytics, I don’t see Null Scans pop up. However, recently I’ve visited high profile customers that are big targets for malicious behavior. As we configure Cisco NetFlow on their routers and ASA firewalls, I’ve noticed FA alerting on these packets with no flags set.

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