NerveCenterTM 3.8: An Overview
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Contents - Overview of NerveCenter -
NerveCenter is a management tool that automates the management of important network events. Through a process called event correlation, NerveCenter helps you track significant events, quickly identify the root cause of critical network problems, and initiate corrective actions. When a critical event occurs, NerveCenter can notify you or someone else using a variety of methods.
NerveCenter uses the Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) to acquire data about managed devices. NerveCenter additionally relies on Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) messages from your network to provide basic information about unresponsive devices.
The following sections describe:
There are a number of management tools designed to identify network faults and send you some type of alert. However, these tools often flood the event console with large quantities of events and network data. For every critical or warning message indicating a possible problem, such as a router that's gone down, you also receive many events as a side effect of the router down condition. You further receive large numbers of messages that are defined as normal, such as simple power-up operations. As a result, you or other operators must sift through the plethora of data before you can identify the real problem and take corrective action.
NerveCenter Correlates and Filters Network Messages
NerveCenter greatly reduces the data on your screen and helps you quickly identify network problems. NerveCenter intelligently interprets and correlates the raw network data to determine whether a problem is serious enough to warrant human intervention. NerveCenter can then take automatic corrective action to solve the problem, inform the management platform, or notify the appropriate person. You see only the real problems and don't waste time on false or redundant alarms.
As a network management tool, NerveCenter provides intelligent, proactive management of local and wide area networks.
NerveCenter obtains data from SNMP agents running on managed nodes by processing incoming SNMP traps and polling the nodes for specific MIB values using SNMP Get requests. When a predefined network condition is detected, NerveCenter stores the event information in a finite state machine called an alarm. The alarm continues to track the status of the interface, node, or enterprise being monitored. The alarm waits for subsequent events or issues polls to determine if the condition warrants further action.
For example, by tracking events based on their persistence, NerveCenter can detect when a router experiences a persistent link-down condition. Upon detecting a downed communication link, NerveCenter waits to see if the link is restored within a given amount of time. If the link comes back up within the specified time, NerveCenter acknowledges the situation and returns the alarm to its normal (ground) state. However, if the link remains down, NerveCenter can perform a variety of actions based on your management strategy.
In another example, NerveCenter can detect when a group of nodes appears to be down or unreachable and then poll their parent router. If the router is down, further polling of those nodes is disabled until the router is back up.
To correlate and filter this data, NerveCenter relies on configurable models of network and system behavior, or behavior models, for each type of managed resource.
| Behavior model |
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A behavior model is a group of NerveCenter objects that detect and handle a particular network or system behavior. A typical behavior model consists of an alarm with all its supporting polls and masks, though behavior models can have multiple alarms. Any managed device can be associated with one or more behavior models. For a description of behavior models, see How Behavior Models Work. |
Once a NerveCenter behavior model has identified a problem, it can take automatic actions, including notifying an administrator or a network management platform, executing a program or script, modifying the node's properties, changing SNMP values, and logging the critical data.
| Introduction | How Behavior Models Work |
| 29 July 2003 |