SNMP monitoring: traps or thresholds?

[t.baranski]

I'm in the process of deploying an SNMP infrastructure for our network using OpenNMS, and am wondering if I should use either traps or thresholds (or both?) to detect Cisco events such as high router/switch temperature, high CPU usage, etc.

I've always thought of traps as being the standard way to be notified of such things, but with UDP there's no guarantee that the NMS will ever see a given trap. By using thresholds (i.e., monitoring an OID an alarming when it exceeds a certain value), the NMS will detect the event on it's own and can react accordingly. So I am undecided on which method to use.

I'd appreciate any advice from those of you who use SNMP.

Thanks,

Terry

[rmushtaq]

For certains things like CPU, Memory, there are not traps. Therefore, you'll have to setup thresholds for these any way.

[joburgos]

If you decide on a SNMP performance monitoring software please let me know and I can forward an eval. CD with a 30 day key.

jose.burgos@linmor.com www.linmor.com

Geared toward Cisco devices.

-Jose