Trap Knowledge and Question-time

Author: David McGee

Trap Knowledge functionality (Available via admin section of SNMP Manager: /SnmpManager/trapKnowledge/) offers a method of enabling SNMP Manager Administrators to populate advanced information about specific SNMP trap/alarm types. A complete trap knowledge database empowers the platform to provide a lot more useful information to technicians and end-users that deal with alarm troubleshooting.

Each trap knowledge row in the database generally represents a unique alarm type. All of our current DAS customers leverage this functionality heavily. On a QA system, query the trap_knowledge table in the SNMP Manager database and take a look at the results!

Based on a trap name and/or alarm severity (depending on technology), the following important human-readable information can be populated, and associated with a trap rule in the SNMP Manager, to help operators understand alarms:

• Category

• Description (Often utilised as probable cause)

• Remedy

• Comment

• Context

• Component Type

• Is Service Impacting

• Over Ride Severity

Used in conjunction with Trap Override functionality. Over-ride is in place if this is populated. Use caution! This value is an enum in the database and so can only be one of a list of values. This is important for trap knowledge entry / updates so ensure consistency with existing values.

The only valid values are in the TrapOverrideSeverity enum in the SnmpManager

 public enum OverrideAlarmSeverity {
  CRITICAL("CRITICAL"), MAJOR("MAJOR"), MINOR("MINOR"), WARNING("WARNING"), INFORMATION("INFORMATION"),DEFAULT("DEFAULT"),DISABLED("DISABLED")

Query to check for unique override_severity entries

select distinct BINARY override_severity from trap_knowledge;

These questions are required for self-assessment rather than submitting answers, etc.

• How many trap knowledge entries exist on ExteNet Systems?

• Take a look at the Node Monitor user-interface of the SNMP Manager. Identify areas of the alarm summary that are populated by the trap_knowledge table

• How are trap rules referenced by Trap Knowledge entries?

• What distinct over-ride severities exist for the Trap Knowledge functionality? How flexible is this?