I am monitoring about 50 linux servers for load average, file system utilization, availability etc. Each server is receiving 30 SNMP calls each cycle (every 5 minutes) and every SNMP call leaves 2 lines is the /var/log/messages file.

Is there a way to reduce the number of SNMP calls while retaining the retrieved data?

Article Comments

Hi,

The default configuration of the net-snmp package on many linux-derivatives comes with a default configuration which causes snmpd to log at 'debug' level in /var/log/messages.
The entries you see ('Connection from UDP:') are sent from log-level 'INFO'.
If there is no explicit configuration the default log-level is 'notice'.

You can set up a dedicated log priority to log only messages with level 'warning' and above.

The configuration can be modified in /etc/default/snmpd or /etc/sysconfig/snmpd or similar.
Search for an entry like 

-Ls d

and modify it to 

-LS5d

which tells snmpd to log everything from log-level 'Notice' (5) and above.

Please see the documentation of the distribution you are using for details.
For example for Ubuntu see snmpcmd manpage.

Kind regards


Jul, 2013 - Permalink

Thank you for the reply. I'm actually more concerned with the number of the SNMP calls rather than the "mess" they leave in the /var/log/messages. Is there a way to cause PRTG to use only one SNMP call instead of multiple ones, as products like Zenoss do?

Thanks. Gil.


Jul, 2013 - Permalink

I'm afraid it isn't possible to bundle communities in a multi-get, since the authentication data is only available once. We already use the multi-get option as efficiently as possible within individual sensors in order to reduce the number of requests. However, since multiple traffic sensors are technically separated sensors bundling the same would be very tedious. Receiving multiple requests suits the concept behind SNMP and should not be an issue for devices.


Jul, 2013 - Permalink