<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>NMIS - Network Management Information System</TITLE> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Language" CONTENT="en-us"> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=windows-1252"> <STYLE TYPE="text/css"> TD { font-size : small; border: 1px solid #aaaaaa; } TD.blank { font-size : small; border-width : 0px; } TABLE { color : Black; background : White; border: 1px solid #aaaaaa; width : 100%; } TABLE.blank { color : Black; background : White; border-width : 0px; } P { font-family : Arial; } BODY { font-style : normal; font-variant : normal; font-size : small; color : white; background-color : #190032; text-decoration : none; font-family : Arial; } A:active { color : red; background-color : White; text-decoration : none } A:link { color : blue; background-color : White; text-decoration : underline } A:visited { color : blue; background-color : White; text-decoration : underline } A:hover { color : red; background-color : White; text-decoration : underline } .heading { font-style : normal; font-weight : bold; font-size : x-large; font-family : "Arial Rounded MT Bold"; background-color : #190032; color : White; } #nmis { position : absolute; left : 190px; top : 70px; } #rrdtool { position : absolute; left : 210px; top : 210px; } #sourceforge { position : absolute; left : 225px; top : 270px; } </STYLE> </HEAD> <BODY> <div class="heading">NMIS - Network Management Information System</div> <table> <tr> <td width="50%"><b>Table of Contents</b> <ul> <li><a href="#Announcements"><b>Announcements</b></a></li> <li><a href="#Samples">Sample Screens</a></li> <li><a href="nmis-faq.html">FAQ</a></li> <li><a href="nmis-changes.html">Latest Changes</a></li> <li><a href="#Contributions">Contributors</a></li> <li><a href="#Contributions">Contributions</a></li> <li><a href="#UserGroup">User Group</a></li> <li><a href="#Platform">Supported Platforms</a></li> <li><a href="#Browser">Browser Support</a></li> <li><a href="#Introduction">Introduction</a></li> <li><a href="#Why">Why?</a></li> <li><a href="nmis-features.html">Features and Benefits</a></li> <li><a href="nmis-install.html"><b>Installation</b></a></li> <li><a href="nmis-apache.html">Apache Configuration</a></li> <li><a href="nmis-doc.html">Documentation</a></li> <li><a href="nmis-help.html">Help</a></li> <li><a href="#Required Packages">Required Packages</a></li> <li><a href="#Downloads">Downloads</a></li> <li><a href="nmis-todo.html">To Do</a></li> <li><a href="gpl.txt">GNU License</a></li> </ul> <div id="rrdtool"><a HREF="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/"> <img SRC="rrdtool.gif" alt="RRDTool" width="120" height="34"></a> </div> </td> <td width="50%">NMIS was originally written by Keith Sinclair, it is maintained by Keith and a collection of contributors around the world. <p align="center"><strong><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/nmis-2-00.tar.gz">Download NMIS 2.00 Now!</a></strong> <p>NMIS is hosted by <a href="http://www.sins.com.au/">SINS - Sinclair InterNetworking Services</a> </p> <p>The software has been released to the Public Domain under the <a href="gpl.txt">GPL License</a>. This means that it is free if you agree to the terms of the <a href="gpl.txt">GPL License</a>. If you would like the software under a different agreement please contact Keith Sinclair. </p> <p align="left"><b>NB: </b>NMIS is a hobby. Though some development continues this is limited by fulltime work and life commitments. I have released this software as I wanted to contribute something back to the Network Management Community which has helped me. Guys like Tobias Oetiker!</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="50%">Last updated 21 June 2001 </td> <td width="50%"> <p align="center"><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/nmis/">NMIS Home</a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Announcement">ANNOUNCEMENTS</a> </b> <ul> <li><p>NMIS 2.00 is available NOW!</li> <li><p><b>NOTE: Lots of NMIS has been deprecated! Things that I wanted to do have been done, code simplified, filenames changed and lots of things. This has been done to improve and simplify NMIS but will be that if you have an existing NMIS running you will need to implement the new NMIS carefully.</b> </li> <li><p><b>NOTE: FOR ANYONE UPGRADING TO NMIS 2.0 ENSURE YOU CHECK ALL CONFIG ITEMS.</b></li> <li><p><b>NOTE: Changes now tracked in the <a href="nmis-changes.html">Change Log</a>.</b></li> <li><p>With all the changes NMIS appears to be HEAPS faster!</li> <li><p>Many new config options and configuration items exist.</li> <li><p>Configuration validation routine for ensuring that NMIS is configured properly.</li> <li><p>Updated whole bunches of nmiscgi.pl, updated the style and revamped it a little bit, looks a bit better now.</li> <li><p>Updated logs.pl with a better parsing algorithm, handles the weird messages in syslog which routers and switches send.</li> <li><p>Added map.pl which enables NMIS to display group status colored icons for each group on a HTML map using CSS. Icons will change color with group status, also display summary network metrics and allows drill in to NMIS for each group. (not auto-discovery or drag and drop). Adds a bunch of config.dat elements and requires setting up map.csv with icon placement co-ordinates.</li> <li><p>Added summary.pl which is a very basic NMIS CGI interface for WAP and Palm type devices or low bandwidth connections.</li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Sample"></a><a href="sample/">Sample Screens</a> - </b>these "screen shots" are output from a production system but edited to protect the innocent. Some of the hyperlinks have been removed. A real system would have many hyperlinks to itself. <p>NMIS has had many updates and changes since this sample was produced but this is still representative of what NMIS looks like and does.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Contributors">Contributors</a> - </b>NMIS development has been assisted by (in no particular order): Wade Miller, Russell Miller, Richard Kuehnle, Brian M Estep, Gary Veum, Dave Packham and Stephane Monnier</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Contributions">Contributions</a> - </b>NMIS was orginally developed by Keith Sinclair, since then quite a few people have contributed to its development. If you are interested in contributing to the development you are most welcome to just send your code, ideas, suggestions to the <a href="#UserGroup">User Group</a>.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="UserGroup">User Group</a> - </b> To assist in keeping interested parties in sync I have created a NMIS user group on Yahoo Groups. <table class="blank"> <tr> <td class="blank">Post message:</td> <td class="blank"><a href="mailto:nmis_users@yahoogroups.com">nmis_users@yahoogroups.com</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="blank">Subscribe:</td> <td class="blank"><a href="mailto:nmis_users-subscribe@yahoogroups.com">nmis_users-subscribe@yahoogroups.com</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="blank">Unsubscribe:</td> <td class="blank"><a href="mailto:nmis_users-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com">nmis_users-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="blank">List owner:</td> <td class="blank"><a href="mailto:nmis_users-owner@yahoogroups.com">nmis_users-owner@yahoogroups.com</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td class="blank">URL for the user group:</td> <td class="blank"><a href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nmis_users">http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nmis_users</a></td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Platforms">Supported Platforms</a> - </b>NMIS is written in Perl so theoretically if your toaster runs Perl and has an IP address it can run NMIS. Nearly all the development of NMIS has taken place on Solaris for Sparc and i386. NMIS should work on all versions of Unix, and if you have any feedback on how the install went or problems please let the team know @ <a href="mailto:nmis_users@yahoogroups.com">nmis_users@yahoogroups.com</a> so the team can catch the comments and make some more permanent changes for future releases. <p>NMIS is often run on Linux PC platforms but has also been run on higher end Sun Microsystems machines. Memory is more important then CPU in this case. Performance for polling is dependant on many things but usually limited by how long it actually takes to poll each device for the required SNMP statistics. Generally speaking any Pentium II or UltraSparc should be able to manage about 100 to 200 nodes. <span class="940503204-22032001">The faster the machine the more memory should equal more nodes. This will obviously reach some sort of law of diminishing returns.</span></p> Recommended hardware for 100 nodes (highly conservative, would probably do a few more): <ul> <li>Solaris I386 or Linux (or anything you want to support)</li> <li>Pentium III 800 Mhz</li> <li> 256 Megs of Memory </li> <li> 20 Gig of disk (cheap) </li> <li> Fast Ethernet connection to the network.</li> </ul> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Browser">Browser</a> - </b>The CGI scripts of NMIS have been written with <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/">HTML 4.01</a> and <a href="http://www.w3.org/TR/CSS2/">CSS2</a> <a href="http://www.w3.org/">W3C</a> recommendations in mind. NMIS in general relies heavily on Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), so some of the older browsers do not work quite write, for example Netscape 4.x do not render the web pages properly and look quite terrible. NMIS has been tested with the following Windows browsers: <ul> <li>Internet Explorer 5.x</li> <li>Netscape 6.x</li> <li>Opera 5.11</li> </ul> <p>NMIS attempts to be fully validated HTML but does not promise to comply completely at present due to the large amount of HTML embedded in the CGI scripts.</p> </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Introduction">Introduction</a></b><p> NMIS stands for Network Management Information System. It is a Network Management System which performs multiple functions from the OSI Network Management Functional Areas, those being, Performance, Configuration, Fault.</p> <p>It started as a SNMP polling and statistics viewer front-end to Tobi Oetiker's <a href="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/">RRDTool</a>. <a href="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/">RRDTool</a> replaces <a href="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/mrtg/mrtg.html">MRTG</a> but doesn't include a front end and backend to handle SNMP polling and display resulting web pages etc. The original NMIS evolved quite rapidly to meet demands of production environments. The backend, polling engine, uses SNMP to collect interface and health statistics for Cisco Routers, certain Cisco Catalyst Switches and Generic SNMP devices every 5 minutes. </p> <p>The backend stores the statistics in RRD's (Round Robin Databases) and ensures that devices are up, issues alerts, etc. The front end accesses the information stored in the RRD's and displays statistics the resulting graphs, reports, etc. </p> <p>Both the front and back ends are highly extensible and features are easy to add as the structure is learnt. For example the backend was just collecting interface statistics every poll cycle, it was easy to add collection of health (cpu, memory, buffer, etc) and response time, availability.</p> <p>I will continue to spell out more about NMIS but for now, have a look at the Features and Benefits, Install it and see what it can do.</p> <p>NMIS is released as <a href="http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html">GPL</a> software, please ensure that you read the license as by using this software you are bound by it.</td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Why">Why?</a></b> <p>Why write yet another piece of Network Management Software? Simple, most Network Management Software does one thing, focuses on an element from the <a href="http://www.sins.com.au/netman/osi_nms_model.html">OSI Network Mangement Reference Model</a>. This means that you end up with lots of different bits of software running, all of them polling the network and they all have to be integrated. NMIS is trying to meet the requirements of several functional areas from the OSI network management model.<p>At the moment this is Performance Management and Fault Management and a little Configuration Management. That is why NMIS was written, to fill in the gaps and provide one system which will meet a large number requirements and functions of network management. NMIS is also aiming to be proactive, provide reporting and give the status of the network "at a glance fashion".<p>The at a glance is a dashboard of the network with operational status of all network devices and the groups which those devices belong to. NMIS could be considered an API for network management, get the polling engine to collect and monitor, using RRDTool as the database, then access this information in any way you like to display status, statistics, etc. </td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Required Packages">Required Packages</a> </b><p>The following packages and versions are what NMIS was built on, it is highly likely that other versions of the same programs will work but I have not performed the regression tests.</p> <p>The following MOD needs to be made to SNMP_MIB <a href="sub_loadoids.html">sub_loadoids.html</a> this code can be added to the SNMP_MIB.pm file in the SNMP Simple Package.</p> <div align="left"><table border="1" width="100%"> <tr> <td><b>Package</b></td> <td><b>Version<br> Tested</b></td> <td><b>Author</b></td> <td><b>Download</b></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.perl.org">Perl</a></td> <td>5.6.0</td> <td>Larry Wall</td> <td><a href="http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html">http://www.cpan.org/ports/index.html</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/">RRDTool</a></td> <td>1.0.33</td> <td><a href="http://www.caida.org/~tobi">Tobi Oetiker</a></td> <td><a href="http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/download.html">http://ee-staff.ethz.ch/~oetiker/webtools/rrdtool/download.html</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.switch.ch/misc/leinen/snmp/perl/">SNMP Session</a></td> <td>0.77</td> <td>Simon Leinen</td> <td><a href="ftp://ftp.switch.ch/software/sources/network/snmp/perl/">ftp://ftp.switch.ch/software/sources/network/snmp/perl/</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td>SNMP Simple</td> <td> </td> <td>Alan Nichols</td> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/SNMP_Simple.tar.gz">http://www.sins.com.au/public/SNMP_Simple.tar.gz</a><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/SNMP_Simple_NMIS.tar.gz"><br> http://www.sins.com.au/public/SNMP_Simple_NMIS.tar.gz</a> (already patched)</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Time-modules">Time::ParseDate</a></td> <td>99.111701</td> <td><a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?author=MUIR">David Muir Sharnoff</a></td> <td><a href="http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/MUIR/modules/Time-modules-99.111701.tar.gz">Time-modules-99.111701.tar.gz</a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Time-modules">Time::HiRes</a></td> <td>1.20</td> <td><a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?author=DEWEG">Douglas E. Wegscheid</a> </td> <td><a href="http://www.cpan.org/authors/id/DEWEG/Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz">Time-HiRes-01.20.tar.gz</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.apache.org">Apache</a></td> <td>1.3.11</td> <td><a href="http://www.apache.org">Apache Project</a></td> <td><a href="http://www.apache.org/dist/">http://www.apache.org/dist/</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://search.cpan.org/search?dist=Image-Info">Image Info</a></td> <td>0.04</td> <td>Gisle Aas</td> <td><a href="http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GAAS/Image-Info-0.04.tar.gz">http://www.perl.com/CPAN/authors/id/GAAS/Image-Info-0.04.tar.gz</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net">NET-SNMP</a></td> <td> </td> <td>NET-SNMP Project</td> <td>NET-SNMP is not required for NMIS, it is however a VERY handy tool for Network Mangement. <a href="http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=12694">http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=12694</a></td> </tr> </table> </div></td> </tr> <tr> <td width="100%" colspan="2"><b><a name="Downloads">Downloads</a></b> <table> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/nmis-2-00.tar.gz">nmis-2-00.tar.gz</a> </td> <td>NMIS 2.00</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/nmis-1-00b.tar.gz">nmis-1-00b.tar.gz</a> </td> <td>NMIS 1.00b</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/nmis-1-00a.tar.gz">nmis-1-00a.tar.gz</a> </td> <td>NMIS 1.00a</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/nmis-0-9a.tar.gz">nmis-0-9a.tar.gz</a> </td> <td>NMIS 0.9a</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/nmis-0-8c.tar.gz">nmis-0-8c.tar.gz</a> </td> <td>NMIS 0.8c</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/nmis-0-8b.tar.gz">nmis-0-8b.tar.gz</a> </td> <td>NMIS 0.8b</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/SNMP_Simple_NMIS.tar.gz">SNMP_Simple_NMIS.tar.gz</a></td> <td>SNMP Simple NMIS Edited version</td> </tr> <tr> <td><a href="http://www.sins.com.au/public/mibs.tar.gz">mibs.tar.gz</a></td> <td>MIBs - A collection of publicly available MIBs sort of ready to use in general and with NET-SNMP.</td> </tr> </table> </td> </tr> </table> </BODY> </HTML>