How can CA Spectrum be configured to monitor interface models?

Products

• CA Spectrum

Issue/Introduction

We have a couple of interfaces down on a server, how can they be monitored in CA Spectrum?

Resolution

Out of the box, Spectrum does not alarm on interface/port models. The reason being interface/port models are the most common model type in the Spectrum database. If Spectrum, alarms on all interface/port models out of the box, it would cause performance issues.

Most users who need alarms on interface/port models will only need then on a select few.So, the user can select which interface/port models to enable alarming.

Spectrum can be configured to alarm on interface/port models by doing one or more of the following depending on the needs of the user:

1. Receiving a Link Down trap from the device. When Spectrum receives a Link Down trap from a device, Spectrum notes the ifIndex in the trap and can be configured to associate an alarm to the corresponding interface/port model. First, the device has to be configured to send Link Down traps to Spectrum. Then, the device has to be modelled in Spectrum. Then, the associated interface has to have the AlarmOnLinkDownTrap attribute 0x11fc2 set to "Check Status(1)" which is the out of the box default value. Check Status means Spectrum will check if the ifAdminStatus is up and ifOperaStatus is down, then it will alarm. Port Fault Correlation is not set to Disabled in the Fault Isolation subview in the information tab of the VNM model. This is discussed in detail in the docs. 
2. For a port resolved link , enabling Live Links(Sometimes referred to as Live Pipes) on the Link. This causes Spectrum to proactively poll both interface/port models involved in the link and alarm should it detect if either is down.
3. For an interface/port model that does not have a resolved link, the user can set PollPortStatus attribute 0x1280a to Yes on interfaces that are important to them. This will cause Spectrum to proactively poll the ifAdminStatus and ifOperStatus of the interface and alarm if the port is down.

All of the above functionality will generate the "BAD LINK DETECTED" alarm.

Also, all of the above will not work if the generatePortStatusAlarms attribute id 0x12a54 on the interface/port model is set to No. So ifPollPortStatus is set to Yes but GeneratePortStatusAlarms is set to No, Spectrum will not generate an alarm.

Spectrum polls the interface through the device model IP address and community string. So the interface does not have to have an IP address configured.