Main Menu
From the menu you can access the features and functionality of NMIS, there are buttons and pulldowns which allow various ways to access NMIS items. Many things in NMIS are clickable allowing you to drill in and around looking for information and answers. One of NMIS key goals is to summarise the network into a single metric. This has been achieved and allows network managers and engineers to watch this metric for problems in the network as the metric changes. These metrics are shown on the NMIS Dashboard. You can view a small dash or a large dash, if you prefer the large dash by default change the nmis.conf config item "show_large_menu" to "true".
Allows you to search the NMIS data for all interfaces with the keywords in IP address, description, interface name, subnet mask. This is a simple way to see exactly how many Gigabit interfaces you have and the IP addresses for each. This becomes quite a powerful tool by being able to identify which routers have which IP address and IP subnet.
Shows a list of active events in the NMIS event state table. This is what is wrong with the network right now. You can acknowledge and un-acknowledge events to stop them escalating. Events can't be deleted, this is quite deliberate, without them in the log they will keep occurring.
Events are sorted by 'Active' and 'Inactive' and summarised by device. Click on the icon to expand.
If DNSLoc is set - see nmis.conf - then a global map of nodes with current events will be displayed.
A list of previous events color coded and drillable. Default is to span the last two log files. See logrotate.conf.
Event summary will summarise the Event Log by device and event type, so as to display a total of each type of event for each device. Default is to span the last two log files. See logrotate.conf.
Displays the most recent syslog messages, if your devices ar set to send syslog. colour codes by RFC syslog message type, can drill in and find the most severe events on the network for the last 48 hours. Default is to span the last two log files. See logrotate.conf.
Your syslog files - assuming your devices are set to send syslog, will contain a large amount of useful information, which if summarised by log message, severity and device, can present useful patterms or indicators of re-occuring network faults. Default is to span the last two log files. See logrotate.conf.
Produces dynamic reports and lists the snapshot reports if it has been enabled (done through the reports.pl and run-reports.sh scripts). The Top10 report will list the top 10 network devices that may have degraded performance.
A link to admin.pl - basic network and NMIS server troubleshooting tools. Requires path configuration to suit your NMIS server host and O/S.
Add planned outages to NMIS so planned device downtime won't decrease your network metrics. MUltiple devices can be selected for one outage window.
Lists a set of links on NMIS and show summary information, another nice way to view the network information. See Links.
Generates a list of DNS records suitable for updating a DNS BIND server, so you can discover all your network information and populate a DNS server, using SNMP device sysName as the device name.
Displays a global map of devices, based on DNS location or device sysLocation information. See map.pl.
The IP tool allows you to view and calculate IP addressing information for IP subnetting. Handy if you are wondering what the broadcast address is for IP address 10.24.51.193 mask 255.255.255.224
Allows you to view a menu of logfiles you might like to view in your web browser. Add or modify the entries in conf/logs.csv and make sure that the log file permissions are world readable.
Allows you to view NMIS log information for errors, etc. A great place to look if things are going wrong. Default is to span the last two log files. See logrotate.conf.
A description of each of the NMIS configuration tables, with feature description and field value name and attributes.
A summary % number representing the overall network health calculated over the last 8 hours of collected network statistics. Coloured icons show the change in health trends from the previous 8 hr period ( 8 to 16 hrs ago) to the current 8 hr ( 0 to 8 hrs ago) period summary. Summary stats are calculated from the network rrd database every time this screen is refreshed.
The summary network metric is based on reachability = 40%, availability = 20% and health = 40%. Note that Health includes responsetime, and other health metrics. See Device Summary
This displays summary details about a device as gathered from a SNMP poll of the device. This includes some configuration information, a health graph and an interface table. If you do not wish to see the uncollected interfaces set the nmis.conf config item "show_non_collected_interfaces" to "false".
The first menu bar links to additional information such as Health Statistics, Link List and Port Statistics. Additional menu items may be displayed based on device type.
View Config: autolinked to a CiscoWorks RME config store or RANCID config store.
RME is looked for here: /var/adm/CSCOpx/files/archive/shadow/'device type'/.. RANCID is looked for here, typically /usr/local/nmis/rancid ../../rancid/'GROUP'/.. if neither found, Config link is left blank.
Next - a graph of the Availability, Health and Reachability for the previous 48 hrs is displayed.
Availability: A measure of the % availability of the interfaces on this one device. If the device has 4 collected interfaces, and one is marked as down, then the availability % will be 75%.
% Availability = 100 * total device interface 'operStatus' / device 'operCount'
Health: A measure of the overall health of the device, based on weighted values calculated as follows:
health = weight_reachability * reachability + weight_int * 15min average of device interface utilisation + weight_response * normalised response time + weight_availability * total interface availability + weight_cpu * normalised % cpu 5min busy + weight_mem * normalised free DRAM memory The default weights are weight_reachability=0.3 weight_int=0.2 weight_response=0.2 weight_availability=0.1 weight_cpu=0.1 weight_mem=0.1
This displays more detailed graphs about the health of a device.
Displays a list of the links that have NMIS managed endpoints, sorted by ifType. Endpoints are determined by subnet, so if you use /30 blocks for link addressing, NMIS will be able to determine and display a list of links, with % utilisation stats based on the past 48 hours. Links that have only one managed endpoint, such as Internet access links, will not be displayed.
If this device has a frame relay interface, then a list of the discovered PVC interfaces will be displayed, with FECN and BECN graphs.
Displays a % utilisation or bits graphs ( determined by a nmis.conf paramter) of each collected interface.
Displays a list of device interfaces with detailed information and % utilisations stats for each collected interface. Click on the highlighted headings to sort by that column. Click on the interface 'Name' to display the popup graph menu for that interface. Click on other columns highlights to 'find' all instances of that value within NMIS.