Before making decisions it’s good practice to gather data. Important data, I should say. In this post I will propose how to use Telegraf to gather that data. Telegraf is open source software that allows you to gather raw data (metrics) from your configured plugins and then forward them to the destination of your choice (with the output also determined by how you configure your plugins).
In brief, Telegraf is based on input and output plugins. The input plugins collect data from various sources such as local counters (e.g., memory or CPU usage), while output plugins send these measurements towards the desired destinations such as as time series database like Influx.
Besides local data, Telegraf can also collect remote data, for instance with the SNMP plugin (https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/tree/master/plugins/inputs/snmp). In this case the server where Telegraf is installed is transformed into a monitoring “satellite”.
Consider the use case when you have hundreds of routers where you want to measure network traffic from individual interfaces along with their state. To resolve this problem you can use the classic functionality of NetEye, or else use Telegraf and Grafana, the former to gather data and the latter to visualize it.
So all we need to do is configure an input section in Telegraf where we specify the router to check, the Community string, and how often to collect measurements. Next is the section that indicates exactly which metrics we want to monitor. Here is an example configuration:
[name@IP ~]# cat /etc/telegraf/telegraf.d/router.domain.local.conf
[[inputs.snmp]]
agents = [ “IP” ]
version = 2
community = “public”
interval = “60s”
timeout = “5s”
retries = 3
[[inputs.snmp.field]]
name = “hostname”
oid = “RFC1213-MIB::sysName.0”
is_tag = true
[[inputs.snmp.field]]
name = “uptime”
oid = “DISMAN-EVENT-MIB::sysUpTimeInstance”
# IF-MIB::ifTable contains counters on input and output traffic as well as errors and discards.
[[inputs.snmp.table]]
name = “interface”
inherit_tags = [ “hostname” ]
oid = “IF-MIB::ifTable”
# Interface tag – used to identify interface in metrics database
[[inputs.snmp.table.field]]
name = “ifDescr”
oid = “IF-MIB::ifDescr”
is_tag = true
When the Telegraf service restarts, all the data will be available in Influx and can be used to create dashboards with all the requested network traffic information, availability, and errors that could be extracted from the router.
Do you have routers that don’t have SNMP enabled? Then try Telegraf’s PING plugin and you’ll even have the percentages of errors on the line!
So measure, measure, measure. And the next step? Visualize it!
Roberto Palmarin
“Hi everyone, I’m Roberto and I was born in Bolzano in 1971. After graduating as an Electronic Engineer at the University of Padua, I started my professional career as an industrial automation systems designer, back in the days when programs were written in assembly language. In 2000 I decided to enter the world of computer science because I was fascinated by the Web and the IT world, and so I went to work for the ISP provider of the Autonomous Province of Bolzano. Information technology and open source have become my passion as well as my work and I gained experience with many kinds of computer systems, other technical fields, and in business organization.
Now I’m here at Würth Phoenix and I’m ready for new challenges and experiences. In addition to work, I very much like to discover new places with my family and live near nature, especially by exploring the mountains.”
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