Today we will be a looking at a debug tool inside LogicMonitor, that I use pretty frequently and has saved me time when troubleshooting alerts on my devices. At a high level, LogicMonitor is an onboarding platform that allows Managed Service Providers the ability to monitor and gain full visibility of their customer’s environments. Let’s take a look at this handy tool!
Suppose you get alerted by LogicMonitor that SNMP is no longer functioning on one of your devices. First step is to log in to LogicMonitor and locate the device in question. If you click on the device name and navigate to the “Alerts” tab, you should see an orange alert like below.
Here we can see information such as the device name, the error, and the exact date and time this error occurred.
Click on the device name one more time and this will redirect you to the SNMP connectivity portal for this device. This page allows you to check many parameters for this specific device as you can see on the left-hand pane, in the image below. In this case we see the SNMP connectivity option highlighted in blue on the bottom left, has an orange triangle to its right, meaning there is something going on there.
Click on the “Raw Data” tab, to the left of the “Alerts” tab. This page shows you SNMP retrieval data along with the date’s and time LogicMonitor attempted to poll SNMP data from this device. In our case, you can see it says “No Data”.
Below is an example of what a working configuration data poll looks like just FYI. You can see under “Uptime” we have some information.
Next, lets click on the “Debug” button just below the “Raw Data” tab. What you are seeing now is the diagnostic portal, which is similar to the command line on Cisco IOS devices.
As you can see, you are presented with a long list of commands on the left and on the right, a description of what their function is. At the very bottom left-hand corner, there is a dollar sign icon where you will be inputting a command from the list. Due to the longevity of the list, I only show a few of the many commands available.
In this case since we are troubleshooting SNMP connectivity, we want to issue the command “!snmpdiagnose”, followed by the IP address of the device in question and click Enter. As you can see In the screenshot below, LogicMonitor is “Fetching” a response from the device, but cannot reach it so our test failed, as indicated by the error message we receive at the bottom under “suggestion”. Usually when SNMP is functioning properly, you will only see one of those “Agent has fetched the task” messages and an OK message displays at the bottom, meaning SNMP is OK.
This debug tool is a great resource to have because it clearly specifies some key information about the SNMP configuration on this device. For example, after the fetch messages at the top, you can see the IP address, SNMP version, whether the device is pingable, and the OID number as well. Under “Suggestion” it says to check the credentials and to check if the service is even up to begin with. I feel these little details are often overlooked because our first instinct is sometimes to jump straight into troubleshooting the actual configuration itself.
Fast-forward, let’s say you’ve completed the troubleshooting and you concluded that SNMP was not enabled on the device, and you enabled it. Let’s go back to the Debug page on the device in question and run the “!snmpdiagnose” command followed by the IP address again. You should now see output like below and the end result at the bottom should say “OK”. This confirms SNMP is now functioning properly and LogicMonitor can now reach poll SNMP and receive data.
This debug feature is one of MANY great features that facilitates troubleshooting the devices you monitor in LogicMonitor. Sometimes the hardest thing is to find a direction to go in, to begin with, and this tool does a great job doing just that. Although this example revolved around SNMP, this tool can help troubleshoot many other aspects of LogicMonitor as well.
I really appreciate you tuning in for a quick read and I hope this was helpful!
If you have any further questions, please feel free to reach out to us at sales@lookingpoint.com, we would be more than happy to assist you.
Thank you!
Will Panameno, Network Engineer