F5 Big-IP Monitor

The SiteScope F5 Big-IP Monitor allows you to monitor the statistics of a F5 Big-IP load balancing device using SNMP. The error and warning thresholds for the monitor can be set on as many as ten load balancer statistics.

Usage Guidelines

Use the F5 Big-IP Monitor to monitor the content of event logs and other data from F5 Big-IP load balancing device. You can monitor multiple parameters or counters with a single monitor instance. This allows you to watch server loading for performance, availability, and capacity planning. Create a separate F5 Big-IP monitor instance for each F5 Big-IP load balancing device in your environment.

The default run schedule for this monitor is every 10 minutes, but you can change it to run more or less often using the Update every setting.

Completing the F5 Big-IP Monitor Form

To display the F5 Big-IP Monitor Form, either click the Edit link for an existing F5 Big-IP Monitor in a monitor table, or click the Add a new Monitor to this Group link on a group's detail page and click the Add F5 Big-IP Monitor link.

Complete the items on the F5 Big-IP Monitor form as follows. When the required items are complete, click the Add Monitor button.

Server: Enter the name of the server you want to monitor.
MIB File: Select either the F5 MIB file or "All MIBs". Selecting the F5 MIB file will cause only those objects that are described within that MIB file to be displayed. Selecting "All MIBs" will cause all objects discovered on the given F5 Big-IP to be displayed when browsing counters. If no MIB information is available for an object, it is still displayed, but with no textual name or description.
SNMP Version: Select the version of SNMP to use when connecting.
Community: Enter the community string (valid only for version 1 or 2 connections).
SNMP V3 Authentication Type: Select the type of authentication to use for version 3 connections.
SNMP V3 Username: Enter the username for version 3 connections.
SNMP V3 Authentication Password: Enter the authentication password to use for version 3 connections.
SNMP V3 Privacy Password: Enter the privacy password if DES privacy encryption is desired for version 3 connections. Leave blank if you do not want privacy.
SNMP V3 Context Engine ID: Enter a hexidecimal string representing the Context Engine ID to use for this connection. This is applicable for SNMP V3 only.
SNMP V3 Context Name: Enter the the Context Name to use for this connection. This is applicable for SNMP V3 only.
Counters: Choose the server performance parameters or counters you want to check with this monitor. The table list to the right of this item displays those currently selected for this monitor. Use the choose counters link to bring up the counters selection screen. check or clear the check boxes on the choose counters screen to select between one to ten counters to monitor on this server.
Update every: Select how often the monitor should check this SNMP value. The default interval is to run or update the monitor once every 10 minutes. Use the drop-down list to the right of the text box to specify another update interval in increments of seconds, minutes, hours, or days. The update interval must be 15 seconds or longer.
Title: Enter a title text for this monitor. This text is displayed in the group detail page, in report titles, and other places in the SiteScope interface. If you do not enter a title text, SiteScope will create a title based on the host, server, or URL being monitored.

Advanced Options

The Advanced Options section presents a number of ways to customize monitor behavior and display. Use this section to customize error and warning thresholds, disable the monitor, set monitor-to-monitor dependencies, customize display options, and enter other monitor specific settings required for special infrastructure environments. The options for this monitor type are described below. Complete the entries as needed and click the Add or Update button to save the settings.

Disable

Check this box to temporarily disable this monitor and any associated alerts. To enable the monitor again, clear the box.

Timeout

Enter the total time, in seconds, that SiteScope should wait for all SNMP requests (including retries) to complete.

Retries

Enter the number of times each SNMP GET request should be retried before SiteScope considers the request to have failed.

Port

Enter the port to use when requesting data from the SNMP agent. The default of 161 is the port on which an SNMP agent will typically be listening.

Counter Calculation Mode

Use this option to perform a calculation on objects of type Counter, Counter32, or Counter64. The available calculations are:

a simple delta of the current value from the previous value, OR
a rate calculation using the delta of current value from previous value, divided by the time elapsed between measurements

Note: This option only applies to the aforementioned object types. An SNMP by MIB Monitor that monitors Counter objects as well as DisplayString objects will only perform this calculation on the Counter objects.

Verify Error

Check this box if you want SiteScope to automatically run this monitor again if it detects an error. When an error is detected, the monitor will immediately be scheduled to run again once.

Note: In order to change the run frequency of this monitor when an error is detected, use the Update every (on errors) option below.

Note: The status returned by the Verify Error run of the monitor will replace the status of the originally scheduled run that detected an error. This may cause the loss of important performance data if the data from the verify run is different than the initial error status.

Warning: Use of this option across many monitor instances may result in significant monitoring delays in the case that multiple monitors are rescheduled to verify errors at the same time.

Update Every (on error)

You use this option to set a new monitoring interval for monitors that have registered an error condition. For example, you may want SiteScope to monitor this item every 10 minutes normally, but as often as every 2 minutes if an error has been detected. Note that this increased scheduling will also affect the number of alerts generated by this monitor.

Schedule

By default, SiteScope monitors are enabled every day of the week. You may, however, schedule your monitors to run only on certain days or on a fixed schedule. Click the Edit schedule link to create or edit a monitor schedule. For more information about working with monitor schedules, see the section on Schedule Preferences for Monitoring.

Monitor Description

Enter additional information about this monitor. The Monitor Description can include HTML tags such as the <BR> <HR>, and <B> tags to control display format and style. The description will appear on the Monitor Detail page.

Report Description

Enter an optional description for this monitor that will make it easier to understand what the monitor does. For example, network traffic or main server response time. This description will be displayed on with each bar chart and graph in Management Reports and appended to the tool-tip displayed when you pass the mouse cursor over the status icon for this monitor on the monitor detail page.

Depends On

To make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor or monitor group, use the drop-down list to select the monitor on which this monitor is dependent. Select None to remove any dependency.

Depends Condition

If you choose to make the running of this monitor dependent on the status of another monitor, select the status condition that the other monitor or monitor group should have in order for the current monitor to run normally. The current monitor will be run normally as long as the monitor on which it depends reports the condition selected in this option.

List Order

By default, new monitors are listed last on the Monitor Detail page. You may use this drop-down list to choose a different placement for this monitor.

Setting Monitor Status Thresholds

SiteScope Application Monitors allow you to set multiple threshold conditions to determine the status reported by each monitor. The individual conditions are combined as logical OR relationships so that when one or more of the conditions (for example any of the conditions for Error if) are met the monitor status is set to the applicable condition. If multiple conditions are met for more than one status condition (such as conditions for both error and for warning), the status for the monitor is set to the highest valued condition. Thus a match of an error condition and a warning condition would be reported as an error status, error being the highest value, warning the next highest and good the lowest value.

Error if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more error conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change error threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. After choosing a counter or parameter, use the comparison operator drop-down list to specify an error threshold such as: >= (greater than or equal to), != (not equal to), or < (less than) and enter a comparison value in the box provided. Comparison values should be entered as whole numbers.
Warning if: Use one or more of the selection boxes in this item to define one or more warning conditions for this monitor. Use the drop-down lists in these items to change warning threshold(s) relative to the counters you have selected to check with this monitor. Set these values relative to those you set for the error threshold in the Error if item.
Good if: You can set this monitor to return a good status for certain conditions. You may define those conditions here. Complete this item as you would for the Error if and Warning if items.