Best way to monitor SnapCreator (eg. using Nagios)

[uptimenow]

Hi,

I am using the SnapCreator GUI to configure, schedule and manage a number of backups (SME, SMSQL, MySQL, DB2, ...). So far so good. The customer I implemented this at is using nagios to monitor various parts of the infrastructure. He's very happy with SnapCreator, but it's annoying that he has to open the GUI regularly to check the status of the various backups. It's nice to have a centralized view of all the NetApp/snapshot backups, but there's a lot more to this customer's infrastructure, and that's why they have a dedicated and centralized monitoring solution (Nagios) that they'd like to use to monitor everything.

What would be the best way to monitor SnapCreator backups ?

I thought of two approaches (using Nagios but I guess this could apply to any monitoring software that offers add-on scripting):

- Write a nagios plugin that parses the output of the various SC logfiles, per profile and per configuration, and alert upon any irregularities found.

- (IMHO a better solution) Query the SnapCreator database about the results (status of the last run) of the various tasks.

I guys this question ties in with this thread: https://communities.netapp.com/thread/22096 where people would also like to have access to parts of the SC database.

Thanks in advance.

Best regards,

Filip

[ktenzer · Accepted solution]

Hi Filip,

Yes there is a great way to integrate with NAGIOS or any monitoring software.

Use the SENDTRAP and SUCCESS_TRAP parameters in configuration file.

SENDTRAP tells SC where to send failed backups and SUCCESS_TRAP where to send successful backups

For example lets say cmd to send an alert to nagios was "nagios -host 10.10.10.1 -message "this is an error" -condition error"

SENDTRAP=nagios - host 10.10.10.1 -message %MSG -condition error

In addition you could do

SUCCESS_TRAP=nagios -host 10.10.10.1 -message %MSG -condition info

And lets not forget you can change the SC message by doing this:

MSG=NAGIOS ALERT %MSG

OR

MSG=%MSG NAGIOS ALERT

This allows you to customize message and add something before or after to further integrate. Basically anything is possible with this implementation

Let us know if this works?

Keith

[uptimenow]

Fantastic, thanks!

[PUSHMON00]

Hi Filip. Since your customer already has Nagios, then SUCCESS_TRAP calling Nagios is the ideal solution. For customers who doesn't have a Nagios setup, you can also try PushMon. Call PushMon on SUCCESS_TRAP and it will notify you if that call does not happen. This takes care of both a backup failure or the machine running SnapCreator is off. PushMon is on the cloud so you do need access the the internet for PushMon to work. You will still need the GUI for the backup details, but PushMon will help you with the alert side of things.

[uptimenow]

Thanks for the info!