File system Monitoring for Citrix Netscaler devices in Spectrum

Products

• CA Spectrum
• DX NetOps

Issue/Introduction

How can file systems for Netscaler devices be monitored if there is no option to monitor file systems:

Environment

DX NetOps Spectrum Release : 21.2

Resolution

No, if you directly discover the Netscaler device in Spectrum it will be assigned type "Citrix Netscaler" which doesn't allow for direct monitoring of system resources such as "file system".

However, since it uses FreeBSD as its underlying OS, it may be possible to install NetSNMP (a free open-source SNMP agent) on it. NetSNMP allows for RFC2790 system resource monitoring:

Additional Information

If you cannot install the NetSNMP (or similar) agent, then the only option left will be to create a SpectroWatch on an attribute that provides filesystem metrics.

For system resource monitoring, Spectrum relies on resource monitoring agents such as systemEdge or NetSNMP.   Without such an agent on the device, it’s not possible.  We list the supported agents here:

TechDocs : DX NetOps 21.2 Spectrum : Host System Resources Management 

To help you monitor resources, DX NetOps Spectrum provides management support for the following resource monitoring agents:

• CA SystemEDGE Agent
• CA Unicenter NSM System Agent
• Dell OpenManage
•  Fujitsu ServerView Agent (for PRIMERGY servers)
•  HP Systems Insight Manager
• iAgent
•  IBM Director
• Net-SNMP (UC Davis)
• Sun Management Center

So if none are available, then you will not be able to monitor the file system or other resources.