Smarts IP: No performance data is being returned for Nokia firewall

Products

• VMware Smart Assurance

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:




Smarts IP is not returning performance data for Nokia firewall
Smarts IP is not monitoring performance on Nokia firewalls

Environment

VMware Smart Assurance - SMARTS

Cause

The device is not showing the ifHighSpeed value for each interface according to MIB definition, so Smarts IP is not instrumenting the device. This is caused by a problem with the device agent.

Cause background
This problem occurs because there is no performance instrumentation for the interfaces and no polling is happening for performance, so Performance details/Current utilization are missing. No instrumentation is created because all are 100 MB interfaces and there is no ifHighspeed value available from the agent. Smarts can instrument these interfaces only if the agent provides a value for ifHighSpeed.

Problem environment example
In one environment that experienced this issue, the value showing for ifHighSpeed was 0. This is wrong according to the RFC and also according to the MIB definition (see Note statement). In this environment, agent was showing values for the IfSpeed OID but not for IfHighSpeed. Also, some indexes were showing InHCOctets values, but their ifSpeed/IfHighSpeed was also 0.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must contact your device vendor and have the vendor correct the MIB.

Additional Information

RFC definition for ifHighSpeed:

ifHighSpeed OBJECT-TYPE
SYNTAX  Gauge32
MAX-ACCESS  read-only 
STATUS      current

DESCRIPTION "An estimate of the interface's current bandwidth in units  of 1,000,000 bits per second.  If this object reports a value of `n' then the speed of the interface is somewhere in  the range of `n-500,000' to `n+499,999'.  For interfaces  which do not vary in bandwidth or for those where no accurate estimation can be made, this object should contain  the nominal bandwidth.  For a sub-layer which has no concept  of bandwidth, this object should be zero." 
::= { ifXEntry 15 }