Confused about network discovery, and using NetXMS agents as proxies

Started by agfjpcs, October 14, 2016, 08:03:10 AM

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agfjpcs

We're a managed services company and have decided to use NetXMS as our network monitoring software. I'm still in the early stages of deployment and getting to understand how NetXMS works
Something i'm a bit confused on is in regards to network discovery and agents
We typically don't have a VPN into a clients network and so we can't ever get direct access to their subnet from our network (and we have a lot of clients that use the same subnet range)

We want to install an Agent in their network, and have that agent do all the polling and network discovery of their internal network. So that we don't have to manually add every device 1 by 1

What I don't understand is firstly..

1) How does NetXMS perform its network discovery? In Configuration -> Network Discovery I enter IP ranges. Are these ranges ONLY scanned by the server that NetXMS server is install on? Or does the server tell all the agents "Hey can you please scan for these configured IP ranges and report back to me"
If it's the former, then how do I get an agent to do active discovery?
If its the latter, is it possible to restrict the scope for each agent. Since I know that most clients only have a single class C network so it would be a huge waste of time scanning 172.16.0.0/12. I would want to tell each agent to only scan on its relevant subnets

2) I believe at this point in time, Agents are polled by the server and not the other way around, correct? So we have to port-forward on the client/Agent's side
Ideally I would like to be able to install an agent in their network, tell it our IP address and it will send to us. So that we don't have to port-forward on every clients network. Is this possible?

3) How do I add devices and have the remote agent be the one that does all the polling. I'm trying to poll a HP switch with a remote agent and its just not working. What exactly do I have to do
What I've done is 'Create Node' -> Set IP address to that of the HP Switch, set 'Proxy for SNMP' to the remote agent and clicked ok. Is this it? Do I need to do anything else? Cause its not working. This is what I get
[14.10.2016 15:01:32] **** Poll request sent to server ****
[14.10.2016 15:01:32] Poll request accepted
[14.10.2016 15:01:32] Starting configuration poll for node SW-Core
[14.10.2016 15:01:32] Capability reset
[14.10.2016 15:01:32] Checking node's capabilities...
[14.10.2016 15:01:32]    Checking SNMP...
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Capability check finished
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Checking interface configuration...
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Unable to get interface list from node
[14.10.2016 15:01:33]    Interface "unknown" is no longer exist
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Interface configuration check finished
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Checking node name
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Node name is OK
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Finished configuration poll for node SW-Core
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] Node configuration was not changed after poll
[14.10.2016 15:01:33] **** Poll completed successfully ****


Remote agent has port 4700 forwarded, but not 161. Does the master server send all commands to the agent on port 4700 or do I also have to open up 161 (or other ports?)

agfjpcs

Update: Answer to #3 was provided by an older post I found on this forum (lost the link to it now.... closed the tab earlier)
It just so happens they were also trying to poll a HP switch. And apparently HP switches won't necessarily respond on the same IP they were polled at, and netXMS wasn't acknowledging the return packets as the source IP was different to where it sent. The answer was to look at the IP address table and I found the switch had an IP on the same subnet as the Agent (I was trying to poll x.254.254), changed it to x.11.254 and hey presto it worked perfectly fine

tomaskir

1) Network discovery over agents is not supported, currently network discovery works only directly from the server.
2) Yes, currently connection is Server->Agent only. Agent->Server connection is one of the most requested features, I believe it will be developed relatively soon.

troffasky

Quote from: tomaskir on October 14, 2016, 12:39:11 PM
1) Network discovery over agents is not supported, currently network discovery works only directly from the server.

If an SNMP agent were to send traps to a NetXMS agent, would that type of "passive discovery" work?