Overtime for IBM NetView
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What is Overtime for IBM NetView?
OverTime takes user selected devices from your NetView submap, starts NetView collecting SNMP statistics on these devices and prepares HTML pages to graph the results, all from a single menu item from within NetView. See all your network statistics OverTime.How does OverTime for IBM NetView work?
- For I/O devices like routers, switches and hubs, OverTime uses SNMP to query the selected devices to see what Input/Output interfaces they have and sets up a Round Robin Database (RRD from Tobias Oetiker, the creator of MRTG and RRDTool). The RRD does not grow in size once setup. OverTime configures NetView to perform all the necessary SNMP data collections for it. OverTime updates an index HTML page with the new devices. When you want to see the information collected, you simply drill down from the index page and OverTime graphs the collected data. An HTML page showing the most recent and detailed graphs for each interface on the device is displayed, along with IO Errors for each interface and CPU utilisation on supported devices. All of the graphs on this device page are linked to more detailed views with four graphs being generated that show the information over progressively longer periods.
- If NetView is collecting any numeric SNMP data from the "Data Collections & Thresholds" menu for any device, then if that device is added to OverTime, OverTime follows the same process as above except that the data sources are those setup in the Data Collections. This flexibility allows OverTime to record and graph such diverse information as Temperature, Humidity from an environmental monitor, Mail Queues from an e-mail system and disk space usage from servers. Labels for titles, legends and y-axis are automatically generated, but are easily modifiable by the user.
- OverTime is used to display PingTime collected ping response time information. PingTime is now bundled with OverTime.
- You can have your own data collections added into, kept and displayed by OverTime. Any information, not just SNMP data, can then be kept and displayed. Maybe you need to know how well your web server is running or maybe you need to count cars passing your front door. With External Collections you can do these and more.
- Template collections specify what you want collected by OverTime for each kind of device. Define what you want collected and how it should be labelled using the information from the device. New devices are added or updated quickly and show relevant information for your site. Customise OverTime to your specifications.
- Template output alloys you to completely customize your html ouput pages. Create completly custom output pages and have OverTime fill in the details. Add company logos, backgrounds, colors. Create simple lists and tables. Add or exclude optional html based on the data. Customise OverTime to your specifications.
- OverTime Security controls access to either the complete list of OverTime device graphs or groups of device graphs can be controlled using OverTime security. Devices can be arbitarily grouped. Users require a password to view the graphs.
Example of OverTime output
Monitoring of device/s by OverTime can be stopped by selecting the device/s and running the "Stop Collecting Target/s" menu item.
When you want to see what devices are being monitored by OverTime select OverTime's "Show Current Target/s" menu item. OverTime will then highlight the devices in the NetView map.
OverTime makes the most efficient usage of the host system's resources by performing the least amount of work. No wasted processing of RRDs or generating never-to-be-seen graphs. RRD database files that are not updated automatically when a user views the results are updated, typically, twice a day with the OverTime's bulk database update tool. These updates can be run "out-of-hours".
Pages requested by the user during the day only need to update the RRD from the last bulk update or from the last time the page was viewed (whichever is shorter). Indeed, if two users are viewing the same page, only one of them will produce new graphs and the other views the graphs already generated.
To keep the storage requirements of the NetView database directory in control, OverTime comes with a file trim utility. This utility allows all the NetView collected data to be trimmed so that only the last 'N' days of data is kept. This utility, run on a regular basis, alleviates the headaches of growing disk space requirements versus the need to keep current information.