Nagios Support Forum

I downloaded the recent version of Nagios xi, Logger, and Fusion, and Networking (for collecting Cisco Netflow)

I set a scheduled meeting for Tuesday to get assistance with support but somewhat familiar with the product from prior jobs and lot of books on http://www.safaribooksonline.com

I would like to use this product but every time I've tried to use it I get stopped at the web interface. I need the logon and password to this xi appliance and the Netflow appliance today. The Netflow appliance lists no logon. The xi appliance lists a logon but it has nothing to do with the Web GUI. Apparently it is generating a random password that no one knows except the appliance? I have spent the last 9 hours trying to find the right combination of passwords. Watched 11 Videos and read three books.

So, this is what I need now. Right now, today, tomorrow. Before Tuesday. If you can give me this information and want to stop right here - thank you.

If you care about our industry and want to help, keep reading. I've worked for companies that had entire teams dedicated to configuring NAGIOS. I'm one person. This is not the only POC I'm looking at. What I'm really looking for is a few people that want to join my steering committee and get off on solving problems as much as I do.

First observation, it should not be set for DHCP. Not sure how that is Enterprise friendly. Great for workstations but not management networks or server networks.

I'm bringing this up on a CIsco UCS chassis with 768 GB RAM per blade, Nimble array, Nexus Switches, VMWare, Veeam.

I need all of these up by Tuesday. The two that usually give me the trouble is the Fusion and Nagiosxi.

This is a VOIP, SIP, something problem. QoS is set across all the lines. AT&T requested CoS enabled (trust) on the Cisco Catalyst switches on 7 and 8.

I asked why. The meeting pretty much ended on a note that "we think we will find something interesting" and the only thing they succeeded in was causing a spanning tree event that took down the network. Yes, AT&T. I have a 100MB AVPN connection to that AT&T / Avaya Data Center in Dallas.

Two weeks ago, it goes down for 3 minutes. 3 minutes. No ticket, no call, no alert. We had to call them. = Managed Circuit.

3 year, multi-multi-multi million dollar contract and 5 nines (9999) five nines I'm told by switching to managed network.

Yet, for some reason that no one can explain to me, there are edge routers at every remote location except the primary datacenter located in Dallas? No router. No HSRP. It is a flat out layer 2 handoff to Cisco Catalyst Switches that I bought. They are using BGP and EIGRP and when the circuit went down 2 weeks ago, no failover.

I have extra SIP trunks, I have a dedicated P2P line that is 100 MB from Dallas to Oak Ridge. 100MB AVPN from Dallas to Oak Ridge.

I walked in to the ass-end of this but I promise you I will find the problem despite how many NUC's are placed throughout this customers network. The same network that was working with an existing IP phone system a year ago?

Fact of the matter is I need something that can prove worth. Provide some type of value. I have a scenario right now as matter of fact.
https://www.experts-exchange.com/questi ... ENDUM.html

I've formed a special projects committee. I have 9 other POC's running and I want to believe that Nagios, if configured correctly, can help us solve this problem with these muffled phone calls. Brand new phone system. New upgraded AVPN network from 8 year old MPLS legacy network and I even signed a contract to make it a managed network.

And no one can tell me why users on on two floors in particular cannot hear their customer because it sounds like they are talking behind a pillow and losing 200 thousand dollars a day.

The only thing that changed on this customer network was migration to a managed AVPN from MPLS and some of those circuits were upgraded to HIGHER bandwidth.

And QoS for VOIP, obviously. Customer site is in another State, AT&T makes recommendation to host the Avaya Phone System in Dallas, TX in the Data Center off Web Chapel, provides reasons from both parties that make sense - signed. A year later, my customers cannot hear their voice mail and on some floors 50% of the customers hang up after pure frustration.

Normally I can reach out to my followers on Experts-Exchange but that has led to nothing. What I'm about to post now, if you care, is two weeks old and costing 200K per day.

It is not short, it is a lot of information, and if you are the type that feels you don't have the time to read things then I am cutting you off at the pass right now and telling you to stop reading - now. You think this is a waste of your time and you live in technology - get out. In the real world, technology people defend the industry, should not think this is okay, and no one asked you to keep reading.

In building A, there are 10 floors.

One recommendation is to enable QoS on VOIP on the “trunk lines”. Okay…… But why now? Why was this not done before when LAN changes were made.

I do not “yet” have the information that caused the SPT incident but I will soon enough. I'm hoping NAGIOS Suite can help with this? If not, please tell me now or send me to a product that can.

These conclusions were derived from some “boxes” (NUC) placed throughout the LAN to collect data. I presume for the Voice Traffic although I’m in the process of setting up a Nagios xi, Logging, Fusion and Networking to pull the logs from the routers and switches, the Netflow data, the SNMP data. AT&T has given me the RO SNMP string for all devices. That took 4 months. They have also agreed to point at a Netflow collector - that would be the Nagios in this equation.

Here is what they did weeks ago that took down the customer network. They are hell bent on proving the problem is somewhere in the LAN despite the fact the LAN equipment is all CIsco Catalyst 3750 switches, POE, and worked just fine for a prior phone system. An old phone system. At least 6 years old.

Despite DSCP being native to the local switch, the requested CoS trust on the egress ports to the NUCs. On floors 5, 7, 8. 7 and 8 being largest call volume for the company. Dual fiber trunks between cores, all cores paired.

On floors 7, 8 and 5
Switchport trunk encapsulation dot1Q
Switchport mode trunk
Mls QoS trust dscp
No shut
Add channel-groups to the interfaces
conf t, interface port-channel channel-number

I approved the change but not during business hours. It was done during business hours and caused a Spanning Tree Event.

Level set:
Part of the gauge here would be the previous phone system and legacy MPLS that set expectation and considered as “working” by the customer. Another gauge would be the natural inclination to expect a “working” solution and other “stated” benefits as a result of; (not all inclusive) New Avaya IP phone system combined with a newer AVPN “managed network” [versus not managed prior and legacy equipment], latest generation routers (AVPN), [assumption, updated firmware and IOS relative to the managed network routers], agreement to host the IP PBX and Voice Mail system in a large Data Center located in Texas as an additional benefit given the choice Phone System, new IP Phones, and I will stop here in the interest of time. In other words, this data center is the preferred hub for both vendors and additional benefits relative to Azure connectivity.

Fact versus perception.

Fact: On floors X and Y, users are reporting an issue that in their words is a “muffling” or “under water” issue. This meets the definition of an issue because it is impacting the business. There are different perceptions regarding “true impact” but the common denominator is lost calls. This is not the only issue. This is the one perceived by the business as causing lost revenue. There are other issues related to Voice Mail system, static, and another queue of issues I want to keep separate.

All floors experiencing the issue, most of the end users are simply not complaining. The highest call volume floors are X and Y – unchanged in 6 years. Same Cisco Catalyst switches, POE. No changes to cabling. Customer was recommended to add additional drops but chose to stay with existing scenario of 1 drop, 1 port, to phone, to computer. 1 GB. Redundant core switches, no changes to port distribution on the switches. Dual fiber cross-connects between floors.

Workstations, unchanged. Net Statistics Workstation = no network errors. NIC set to 1 GB Full (hard coded), IPV6 disabled. Large

Floor X Building 1
To Business Unit A, this means people getting frustrated and hanging up and stating this happens 10 percent of the time”. Regardless, they are frustrated because their job entails speaking to people using the IP Phone. 10% of the time, they cannot do their job and their “customers” hanging up is an unknown impact. Primary role – customer service. Highest call volume.

Floor Y Building 1
Business Unit A is stating “every other call” to be interpreted as 50%. The perception here is lost revenue. Per this business unit, the person they are speaking with hangs up and some of those are not calling back. Again, customer words not mine. Old phone system, no muffle. X is above floor Y. Cisco Catalyst Switches, same dual fiber trunk connections. All 1 GB. POE switch ports. Same switches used with legacy phone system. This business unit claims losses of approximately 200K per day.

Same floor: (Floor Y, Building 1)
Business Unit A, similar call volume. Same issue, but the users we have spoken to thus far are stating “about 10%”.

These are the worst of the worst. In this scenario, there are 10 floors. The highest call volume is and has always been X, second highest Y.

Facts:
Legacy voice system VOIP / SIP. New phone system VOIP / SIP.
Legacy MPLS, 6 years old, unmanaged, unmaintained (firmware, IOS), basic level monitoring using old version of PRTG. 10 sites.

New MPLS to managed AVPN, new equipment, no changes to bandwidth for remote sites.

Customer is losing money.

I’m losing patience.

Now, I could call in favors from individuals that have built the largest networks in the world. When I worked at GMAC as 1 of 4 architects I worked with CCIE’s that were #3000 something. We had so many B2B relationship and processes it required that all the servers have a public IP Address. NATing was not an option. GMAC Bank, GMAC Insurance, GMAC Mortgage, GMAC Finance…. The best of the best.

Last chance. Step up, give me something. Anything I can use to help this customer. When the customer suffers, the industry suffers. When the industry suffers, perception changes. I need to turn this around and make it a win. I’m not understanding the lack of response – to be brutal honest.

I would like to use this product but every time I've tried to use it I get stopped at the web interface. I need the logon and password to this xi appliance and the Netflow appliance today. The Netflow appliance lists no logon. The xi appliance lists a logon but it has nothing to do with the Web GUI. Apparently it is generating a random password that no one knows except the appliance? I have spent the last 9 hours trying to find the right combination of passwords. Watched 11 Videos and read three books.

the web GUI passwords are set when you initially install the OVA, the SSH passwords should be printed on the console pages of whatever hypervisor you're using.

First observation, it should not be set for DHCP. Not sure how that is Enterprise friendly. Great for workstations but not management networks or server networks.

i disagree - getting started makes it easy with DHCP. you can simply change the network configuration over to be static if you choose.

vcissgroup wrote:I’m not understanding the lack of response – to be brutal honest.

I'm really sorry but after the initial items about DHCP and needing the passwords, none of the issues in your post are appropriate for this forum. We aren't a general troubleshooting and IT fixit forum, this forum is for assistance with the Nagios software itself. The points made by @tacolover101 (a previous employee here using his personal account) are perfectly valid, but beyond that we aren't VOIP experts and honestly at this point it sounds like a contractor might be needed.

Now, I could call in favors from individuals that have built the largest networks in the world. When I worked at GMAC as 1 of 4 architects I worked with CCIE’s that were #3000 something. We had so many B2B relationship and processes it required that all the servers have a public IP Address. NATing was not an option. GMAC Bank, GMAC Insurance, GMAC Mortgage, GMAC Finance…. The best of the best.

Last chance. Step up, give me something. Anything I can use to help this customer. When the customer suffers, the industry suffers. When the industry suffers, perception changes. I need to turn this around and make it a win. I’m not understanding the lack of response – to be brutal honest.

Brutal honesty is that most of this has nothing to do with Nagios. Even less so with Fusion. Our sister company runs a large hosted and on-premise VoIP platform complete with SIP trunking and DID inventories that is monitored with Nagios with no problems. Your Nagios related problems are limited to needing the password for the nagios admin page (Google told me this: https://support.nagios.com/kb/article.php?id=146) and how to change IP address on your Nagios box(es). Since you don't mention what OS you're running, I'll assume you should just edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 and change the "dhcp" to "static" and add IPADDR, NETMASK, and GATEWAY settings.

That should solve those problems.

If you need help with your VoIP platform, I'd be happy to refer you to our consulting department.

[Edited to reflect proper association with VoIP company.]

For the record in case it was not obvious by his signature, @eloyd is a reseller and MVP of ours :)

I'm really sorry but after the initial items about DHCP and needing the passwords, none of the issues in your post are appropriate for this forum. We aren't a general troubleshooting and IT fixit forum, this forum is for assistance with the Nagios software itself. The points made by @tacolover101 (a previous employee here using his personal account) are perfectly valid, but beyond that we aren't VOIP experts and honestly at this point it sounds like a contractor might be needed.

Never known until you try.

Can you kindly point me to the forum that can tell me whether or not this product can/does/will help?

I'm prepared to put a team of people on this implement any product that can track down what should be a simple network problem.

I shared the scenario because I'm not going to be idle and just ignore the fact that one of my customers is essentially being treated the way you would not get treated unless your a Fortune 500?

Technology industry standards should cover all customers.

I just want to know if this product can help my team track down the issue and took a chance that someone might already know how to use this product in the given scenario above.

Last I checked, this group was moderated? I wrote this above knowing that it might not get approved and was not asking for your permission.

When it comes to doing what is right for the customer and you feel it is inappropriate you were better off just stating you "don't know". And left it at that.

This problem is going to get fixed. I am the last resort, you understand. This is on my plate now. I accepted the challenge because no one else can figure it out. Or maybe, just maybe someone else has already figured it out.

Please don't respond again unless it is too help.

Brian Murphy
https://www.linkedin.com/in/vitalservices

This group is not moderated. Only after-the-fact are any posts that are "bad" deleted by staff. I am not staff, by the way.

Network Analyzer is only analyzing netflow packets. That's seven pieces of information: source ip, destination ip, source port, destination port, number of packets, number of bytes, and when was it transferred. Your TL;DR note makes it impossible for me to be able to say whether NNA would help you or not, but I'm guessing you need a protocol analyzer, not a Netflow analyzer.

vcissgroup wrote:Please don't respond again unless it is too help.

That's somewhat rude, and not how the forums work as I have explained.

I have already told you this forum is not the appropriate avenue for VOIP troubleshooting, especially at the scale you seem to be encountering. The Sales team might hate me for saying this, but as I mentioned in your other thread, Nagios is not going to point and say "Your problem is XYZ" and show you how to fix it. This is a classic boots-on-the-ground problem that is going to require investigation and know-how, not any one particular tool.

I'm going to be locking this thread now as you have others open dealing with essentially the same sort of issues, and we can continue the conversation there insofar as it is related to the our products.