NMIS 8.5.4G

Monday 24 November 2014

Highlights for the 8.5.4G General Release

8.5.4 is a major new release with numerous new features.

• the NMIS installer now reports missing modules better, and aborts (by default) if there are any crucial missing modules
• NMIS now handles critical sections and long-running NMIS processes much better.
  • PID files are no longer used, and instead the actual process table is checked.
  • New config option max_child_runtime can be used to limit collect/update job runtime.
  • If NMIS jobs runs over-time, a warning event is generated unless config option disable_nmis_process_events is set to false.
  • Collect jobs can now optionally run longer than a single collect cycle, if the command line option ignore_running=true is given - in which case NMIS will just warn about old NMIS processes that are still running, not kill them as it does by default.
  • The NMIS Collect Runtime graph now includes average and maximum numbers of NMIS processes.

• NMIS now consistently supports "true/1/yes" and "false/0/no" for setting boolean configuration values.
• improved new versions of the support tool and the nmis_file_cleanup.sh data pruning tools
• improved logging, reduced false positives in the logs
• improved device support  for Net-SNMP-based hosts and Windows hosts, Cisco devices
• new  and improved device support for Huawei routers, including Quality of Service collection and graphing
• improved rrd_tune_interfaces.pl helper script now sets interface speed maxima, and correctly adjusts them on repeat execution
• improved fpingd.pl with more precise logging. fpingd now can also optionally log stateless node information (see otion fastping_stateless_log) for external consumption
• event escalation is now handled more robustly and consistently
• improved activation of opMaps and opFlow display widgets
• improved file permission handling for improved performance
• numerous graph improvements

NMIS 8.5.2G

Tuesday 9 September 2014

Highlights for the 8.5.2G General Release

8.5.2 is primarily a bug-fix release, but we couldn't resist adding a number of nifty new features as well.

• NMIS now collects, graphs and trends Key Performace Indicators for every node. The health measurement KPIs are configurable in terms of weighting as well as time window (see metrics section in Config.nmis).
• NMIS now supports configurable audio notifications for events of particular severities (see the sound section in Config.nmis).
• URLs in event details are now detected and presented as clickable links.
• The log viewer now supports a simplified binary scheme for coloring event based on severity (see overall_node_status_coarse in Config.nmis).
• Interface speeds are now shown in human-friendly format.
• NMIS is now less noisy if you use a distribution-provided rrdtool instead of compiling your own.
• The NMIS support tool was improved to collect more essential system status information, and to interoperate with the OMK Support tool if present.
• The Apache configuration created by nmis.pl type=apache was corrected and modernized.
• NMIS now supports both old-style crypt and Apache-MD5-style password hashing  for authentication.
• New and Improved support for GE and Netgear devices, adjustments to the Cisco model (for collecting "Tunnel" interface data), improvements for VMware ESXI and Windows 2008
• Improved display and robustness for service monitoring
• The precision of NMIS' log information was improved and a number of nuisance/false positive log messages were eliminated.
• Logging of Node configuration change events can now be enabled and disabled selectively (see log_node_configuration_events in Config.nmis).
• The SNMP Tuning parameters were adjusted for better robustness and interoperability and max_repetitions must now be enabled for a particular node.
• The log rotation config file was adjusted to include all relevant log files.
• An improved script for purging of old files is provided.
• And a number of smaller bug fixes and minor improvements.

NMIS 8.5G

Wednesday 18 June 2014

Highlights for the 8.5G General Release

This release incorporates numerous important improvements to the NMIS GUI and backend. A substantial number of bugs have been fixed as well.

GUI-related Changes and Enhancements

• The GUI for editing nodes has been reorganized and now shows the settings in a much more user-friendly fashion.
  Required settings are now labelled such and shown at the top, followed by less common 'extra' options and finally the (not commonly changed) 'advanced' options.

• The system menu in the GUI was reworked and now provides faster access to the most common and essential configuration dialogs.

• The main dashboard now offers two types of Overview widget.
  There is the old purely numeric "Network Status and Health" display, and the new "Network Metrics and Health" display with both a graph and simplified metrics. The new style is the default, but you can revert to the old widget by setting the configuration option display_network_view (in the modules section) to false.
• Numerous graphs were revised and now use different, friendlier colors.
• The URLs used in the GUI were adjusted slightly to make NMIS work better behind an https reverse proxy.
• The NMIS GUI now provides an RSS feed widget that displays the latest news from the NMIS Community Site.
  If desired, the widget can be disabled by either closing the widget and saving the windows and positions afterwards, or by setting the config option display_community_rss_widget (in the modules section) to false.
• The "Save Windows and Positions" option now works correctly for multiple users, and the windowstate cache file was moved to the var directory.
• A number of GUI widgets were adjusted to work better in both widgeted and non-widget mode.
• Historic information and graphs for disabled or non-collected interfaces is now available as long as the respective rrd files remain present on your NMIS server.
• The health report was fixed and entries are now sorted correctly for all supported sort criteria.
• The utilisation period for the interface table display is now configurable.
  The config options interface_util_period (default: "-6 hours", must be given in RRDTool AT-Time format) and interface_util_label control that feature.

Backend Changes

• The installer script was improved to deal better with installations from scratch, and its log file is now more comprehensive and contains the exit status of any external commands that were run.
• The NMIS Support Tool is now included with the main NMIS package.
• The diffconfigs tool was substantially improved and now works much better for comparing deeply structured files (e.g. model files).
• Support for monitoring services of Service Type DNS was improved and made consistent with the other service tests.
  Now the current node is used as dns server, and it is queried for the dns name given in service_name.
• The Windows server models were updated and no longer attempt to collect unavailable snmp variables.
• SNMP interoperability was substantially improved.
  There are two key config items for dealing with recalcitrant snmp agents, described below. They can be set for an individual node, or as a global (fallback) config option.
  • snmp_max_msg_size (default: 1472 bytes) controls how large a single SNMP packet may be; in LAN-only scenarios it is possible to increase this past 1500 bytes (which causes IP fragments and packet reassembly)
  • snmp_max_repetitions (no default value) controls how many PDUs will be packaged into a single SNMP packet. If large SNMP tables are collected then it may be necessary to reduce this setting to 10-20 (when used with the default packet size); otherwise a figure of 40-50 minimizes the number of SNMP packets and thus speeds up collection.
• NMIS 8.5 provides new and improved device support for GE Power, Alcatel ASAM and VMWareESXi devices.
• Support for generic service monitoring was improved.
  NMIS now automatically collects and displays process information for all devices that support the Host Resources MIB (RFC 2790). The format for this services list display was also updated for better readability. This automatic collection is independent of specific services that you might instruct NMIS to monitor and graph.
• The net-snmp model was substantially improved.
  The memory values and graphs are now more comprehensive and easier to digest, and there is a new threshold alert for high swap memory usage.
  The high process memory alert is now activated automatically if the node in question supports the Host Resources MIB.
  The other alerts and thresholds were finetuned to reduce the number of false positive nuisance events.
• The general logging was reviewed and a number of false positive error messages are no longer generated.
• The location of rrd database files is now directly and solely controlled by the config file Common-database.nmis (in the models directory).
  Previously a cache of the rrd locations was kept in the individual node files, which interfered with moving or reorganizing rrd files and was therefore removed.  If you would prefer a different directory hierarchy for your rrd files, this is now much easier to achieve: all you need to do is inhibit NMIS for a while, edit Common-database.nmis to suit your needs, move the existing rrd files into their new locations, then let NMIS recommence its polling.
• A helper script for cleaning up old data was added.
  admin/nmis_file_cleanup.sh lets you prune unused and outdated files. Please be aware that using this helper would remove files associated with any disabled nodes or interfaces for which you might want to  keep historic data.
• The rrd-related helper scripts were overhauled and now provide more useful diagnostic output.
• The escalation subsystem was improved and orphaned events for deleted nodes, terminated processes etc. are no longer left behind.

NMIS 8.4.10G

Tuesday 4 April 2014

Highlights for the 8.4.10G General Release

This release incorporates a variety of bug fixes and some new features.

Enhancements

• New and improved device support for RAD Optimux, Eltek Power UPS, net-snmp-based devices, Alcatel devices.
• Calculate and alert/threshold test and value expressions now support combining multiple variables in expressions.
• Improved CBQoS metrics
• rrd_tune helper script can now set a ceiling for a node's responsetime.
• Improved browser and standards compatibility in the GUI.
• The traplog receiver now works better with traps from multiple sources, both forwarded as well as directly submitted ones.
• Service testing has been streamlined, with improved graphs and the reporting of the response time for the service test.
• Service testing now supports calling external programs to test a service state.
• Improved handling of models with systemHealth sections, where all collected data is now stored in node files (and available to the GUI) instead of just when an update is run.

Fixes

• All GUI components now work in widget and standalone mode.
• Nodes that are down during updates are now correctly handled and artificial gaps in the reachability graphs are no longer created.
• Per-interface thresholds can now be disabled from the GUI.
• The fpingd behaviour now fully matches the documentation and fallbacks to the system ping client should no longer happen.

NMIS 8.4.8G

Tuesday 28 January 2014

Highlights for the 8.4.8G General Release

This release incorporates a number of features requested by Opmantek commercial customers and a variety of bug fixes. This release also provides a combined script for automatic installation and upgrading..

Enhancements

• New install and upgrade script
  Simply run ./install.pl -h after unpacking NMIS to see its options.
• New Device Support
  New and improved support for GE, Zyxel and Alcatel devices, and improved support for displaying resource utilisation (cpu and memory).
• Outage Scheduler tool
  The new tool bin/schedule_outage.pl allows one to schedule future outages for groups or individual nodes.
  schedule_outage.pl sets up one-off outages only and can be run from cron to create recurring outage windows.
• Node View with configurable fields
  The new configuration option network_viewNode_field_list controls which fields  are shown in the Node View and in what order.
  The default setting  includes a standard set of properties, but custom fields are fully supported.
• Compression of rotated logs
  The configuration for log rotation was updated and streamlined,  and NMIS logs are now compressed after a week.
  install/logrotate.conf should be copied to conf in order to activate this, as well as to fix a path issue with this configuration file.
• New Global Model Overrides
  The configuration option global_collect_ifDescr was added to override the models' interface collection rules, and ifDescr was added  as a per-model collection option.
  Both of these options support regular expressions.
• More Event Details
  The new configuration option global_events_bandwidth controls whether event details should include an interface's bandwidth.

 Fixes

• Improved loading of device information for the NMIS dashboard, improving load times for large deployments
• Escalation policies now work with Event_Element fields that contain "/" characters.
• Various layout fixes for group overview and status pages, and improvements for system health display.
• The snmp maximum message size is now fully adjustable, both on a global basis as well as a per-node setting (on the Edit Node page).
• Node configuration and model editing work both as widgets and as standalone pages now.
• Unprivileged users are no longer shown menus that they are not allowed to access.
• The script subsystem for collecting service data now works as documented.
• The display type "textbox" for custom tables now works as documented.

NMIS 8.4.6G

Monday 14 October 2013

Highlights for the 8.4.6G General Release

• Added config options for threshold_falling_reset_dampening and threshold_rising_reset_dampening
• Changed how runEscalate uses interface info, not working well for 500000 interfaces 
• Added new method to Sys.pm for per node interface index by ifDescr on demand.
• Fixed bug in dashboard where SNMP polled nodes not showing node down properly.
• Fixed nodeConf which was using Lower Case node names and not matching.
• New device support: 
  • PaloAlto devices
  • ServersCheck devices
  • Emmerson Energy Systems
  • Alcatel ASAM's
  • Mikrotik
  • more
• Additional mibs added for traps
• Fixed problems with JavaScript Dashboard, including upgrade of JQuery
• Added interface links to email notifications.

NMIS 8.4.1G

Monday 29 April 2013

This release incorporates feature requests from the community and Opmantek commercial customers.  There is so much going on in this new release writing the release notes has delayed the release, so we have decided to release now and keep expanding and improving the release notes.

Highlights for the 8.4.1G General Release

• New device models for Cisco AP, currently 1200 and 1240, but should work for others, ZyXEL Switches, Cisco Nexus, Cisco ASR9000 (IOS-XR) and Cisco ASR1000 (IOS-XE)
• Fixed NMIS AAA for internal application authentication and authorisation, this includes Single Sign-on Support.
• NMIS AUTH working with LDAP including MS AD LDAP
• Added ability to notify using syslog (requires Net::Syslog)
• Improved server support, Windows, Linux, Solaris, VMware ESXi, Apple MAC OSX
• Custom Alerts, so cool, Alerts - Using models to generate custom events
• Custom Tables, so extensible, Custom Tables in NMIS
• System Health modelling for modelling just about anything without writing code.
• Saveable NMIS widgets, layout your widgets and save the settings and NMIS will start with the same ones.
• Fixed problems with webpage and posting, including improved support for Internet Explorer (Firefox and Chrome work great).
• Added interface descriptions to interface threshold events and emails
• Node configuration change tracking & notification (Cisco devices)
• Added a customer table and customer grouping options to the status dashboard, NMIS Dashboards with Alternate Groupings

New in the 8.4.1G General Release

• Added support for Cisco AP, currently 1200 and 1240, but should work for others
• Added collections for Spanning Tree Topology Changes on a switch and the Number of Routes in a router.
• Added ZyXEL Switch support for MGS-3712F and GS2200-24
• Added temperature support for ZyXEL and Cisco Nexus (under environment)
• Added temperature thresholding
• Fixed PKTS_HC graphs to include better colours (so they can be seen)
• Display the PKTS_HC graph if available.
• Added interface descriptions to Interface up/down events and emails
• General model enhancements
• Added support for Cisco ASR9000 (IOS-XR) and Cisco ASR1000 (IOS-XE)
• Added run-reports.pl which was missing from NMIS8
• Added server health calculations to reflect CPU, Memory and Disk usage
• Service polling for servers now polls CPU and Memory for those services.
• Added full support for Cisco Nexus Devices
• Improved Support for Sun Solaris 5.10
• Converted to HTML5
• NMIS AUTH working with LDAP including MS AD LDAP
• Added a configuration option for setting the protocol in the emails which go out, nmis_host_protocol
• Added ability to notify using syslog requires Net::Syslog (add to install guide)
• NMIS can use snmpEngineTIme in the model instead of sysUpTime and this prevents bad Node Reset events.
• added logOrder field so Logs.nmis can be edited from GUI
• Fixed NMIS Auth splash screen
• Fixed bug with handling of event clearing, in particular stateful proactive events were not getting UP notifications.
• default authorisation privileges with configuration options for group as well
• added faster escalation for Level0, and optional skip escalation for syslog notifications.
• Added Locations, BusinessServices and Status to NMIS Nodes table.
• Add JSON Logging for escalations.
• added default values for Monkey business
• syslog_use_escalation
• disable thresholding globally with global_threshold, and on poll cycle with threshold_poll_cycle
• added custom alerts for creating alerts from SNMP results on the fly.
• fixed problem with SNMP Services being checked when node was down.
• Global model over-rides, added global overrides for the models, so models don't have to be edited individually.
• created models for TCP information, including graphs for tcp-conn and tcp-segs, added to Windows2008 and net-snmp for now.
• Created a config audit, mainly for checking file permissions
• Table configuration moved from tables.pl to configuration files, it is now possible to add new tables to NMIS dynamically.
• Fixed up file permissions in setFileProt, so now non root users can set group permissions.
• Added an NMIS Audit type=audit function and improved type=config to fix all file permissions
• Fixed the ip graph to better represent local and forwarded packets.
• Improved the CBQoS graphs.
• Improved LOTS of graphs.
• Asymmetric (e.g. ADSL) interface support in Node Configuration and throughout NMIS, including thresholding.
• Added many modelling enhancements to the net-snmp model, to assist with NMIS performance monitoring
• Consolidated models with pkts and pkts_hc graphs to save on disk space, this included updates to use pkts_hc data for thresholding.
• Enhanced custom alerts to cover all objects in the modelled node.
• Finalised custom interface modelling for the manual interface table collection for Alcatel.
• added a default Model with HC counters and ifHighSpeed support, must be manually selected.
• improved the look of graphs and made graph fonts configurable.
• new multi-tenant setup
• Updated NMIS OID file with new products from Cisco Product MIB, now scripted for future updates.
• Improved support for Cisco Catalyst IOS Devices
• Changed Catalyst 4000/5000/6000 running CatOS to NOT collect when no interface description.
• Added support for Cisco CSR IOSXR, should support other IOSXR devices.
• Added support for Cisco 1240 Access Points, should support other device types.
• Added testing mode for model verification, debug lite (mode=true)
• Updated login splash screen, included configurable MOTD and Custom Logo
• Contact level event level filter, define the event criticality which a contact is interested in.

Enhancements and Changes in 8.4.1G General Release

NMIS Auth, Single Sign On (SSO) Configuration

• If using SSO, you must be using FQDN's for servers.
• Each NMIS server must be configured with the same auth_sso_domain and auth_web_key, and the auth_sso_domain must contain at least two "." (periods), so the correct auth_sso_domain value for nmis8.opmantek.com would be ".opmantek.com"

Syslog Notification

It is now possible to define a syslog server you want NMIS to send events to, there can be one or more syslog servers defined.

Global Model Overrides

Added global overrides for the models, so models don't have to be edited individually.

• 'global_collect_Description' => '(CNOC|Collection)',
• 'global_nocollect_ifOperStatus' => 'null',
• 'global_nocollect_ifDescr' => 'sublayer|null|controller',
• 'global_nocollect_Description' => '^#',
• 'global_nocollect_noDescription' => 'true',
• 'global_nocollect_ifType' => 'other|softwareloopback|propVirtual|slip',
• 'global_noevent_ifDescr' => 'null',
• 'global_noevent_Description' => '^!|^0',
• 'global_noevent_ifType' => 'other'

Fixes in 8.4.1G General Release

• fixed Windows2008 model for mib2ip being wrong type, created rrd_tune_mib2ip.pl to fix any bad mib2ip RRD's
• added mib2ip to net-snmp
• Removed deprecated MIB object ipOutNoRoutes
• Fixed an Internet Explorer Problem with popup graphs.
• fixed large post edit's in nodeconf
• found wrong datatype on TopChanges (STP Changes), admin/rrd_tune_topo.pl run=true change=true

NMIS 8.3.9G

Thursday 11 October 2012

New in 8.3.9G General Release

• New device support, including Cisco Nexus and VMware ESXi 
• Improved High Capacity Counter support
• Support for SMTP over SSL and SMTP authorisation
• New logs.pl for improved Log viewing (faster, better, stronger)
• Improved IPSLA options for bucket management to improve scalability
• Tool for comparing and automatically updating existing NMIS configurations to the new templates
• Improved threshold controls, so policies can be different for core, distribution and access devices.

'collect' => {
    'Description' => '(CNOC|Collection)',
},

# collect interval time in seconds
my $collect_time = $C->{ipsla_collect_time} ? $C->{ipsla_collect_time} : 60;
# collect interval of buckets in seconds
my $bucket_interval = $C->{ipsla_bucket_interval} ? $C->{ipsla_bucket_interval} : 180;
# extra collect buckets for polling cycle
my $extra_buckets = $C->{ipsla_extra_buckets} ? $C->{ipsla_extra_buckets} : 5; 

chown root /usr/sbin/mtr
chmod u+s /usr/sbin/mtr

NMIS 8.3.1G

Thursday 1 December 2011

New in 8.3.1G General Release

• Hierarchical QoS supported
• IPSLA Support
• NMIS Authentication and Authorisation fully functioning with "Apache" method
• Added many new Authorisation classes and updated default policy
• Added Network Metrics Graph
• Added NMIS Collection Graph
• Many UI enhancements and refinements
• Kai-Uwe Poenisch's updates for AKCP sensor, Cisco CSS and Nortel/Bay networks gear
• Till Dierkesmann updates, including some fixes and mods for Authentication and Authorisation

Fixes in 8.3.1G General Release

• Moved many elements from code to the Configuration (Config.nmis)
• Many many many to be listed.

Caveats for 8.3.1G General Release

• Authentication (Auth.pm) working well with Apache Method, but issues with Cookie handling on internal methods.  Current Apache method usable and functional, and LDAP, Radius, etc, can be implemented with Apache.
• IPSLA module currently requires SNMP_Session, which is included with the release

NMIS 8.2.1

Thursday 22 September 2011

The focus of this release has been to stabilise NMIS8 from the Beta release to something which we feel a candidate for general release, this goal has been largely achieved with feedback from the community and a huge effort by the development team.  In addition there are significant functional and usability enhancements.

Fixes in 8.2.1 Candidate Release

• User Interface (UI) refresh bug fixed
• Integrated SNMPv3 patch from Mark Nagel, SNMPv3 tested and working
• Cleaned up source directory tree of redunant files
• Corrected links to menu icons in many files.
• Search should be case insensitive, based on request from Jose
• Update documentation URL's to opmantek.com/Docs

New in 8.2.1 Candidate Release

• Improved usability.
• Improved look and feel.
• Improved operational usability, more current and historical status in one place.
• Updated UI with improved widget engine, as drilling into more detailed information, each level is presented as a widget
• UI based on jQuery and JD Menu, leveraging full CSS for styling and "skin"
• Each widget is draggable, resizable, closable, independantly of the web page.
• Independant widget refresh cycles, based on URL widget is created with (status widgets refresh, config widgets do not)
• Customisable UI elements all controlled through dash8.css, making the UI highly skinnable.
• All dash generation code bought back to commonv8.js to centralise dash generation.
• Tested and updated many widgets and screens with new colour scheme
• Added Network Events widget based on the NMIS event.log, showing recent operational status.

NMIS 8.1.1

NMIS 8 is the culmination of years of thought and work, the thought went into, how to improve on NMIS 4, which was a challenge, as many people loved the way NMIS worked.  NMIS 8 focused on core engine improvements and an improved user experience.

19 April 2011

New in 8.1.1 Beta

• NMIS8 Changes are significant from NMIS4
• Highly modular code base
• Increased levels of Object Oriented Code use
• Device support based on an Object Oriented hierarchical model, which is coded outside the core system, creating separation from the engine code and device support code.  Also meaning that most device support issues can be resolved without editing the NMIS source code.
• Updated UI, information opens as a widget when drilling down