How to set up a temperature monitoring system with Monitor one and a Poseidon 3262 temperature sensor.

Definition of the problem

Imagine that you are responsible for the computer room of your company and that you need to setup a monitoring system that gives you instant feedback on the current temperature in the room and that also warns you if the temperature gets outside the range from 15° to 25°C.

This article describes a practical approach and guides you through the process of setting up such a system. For this article I used a Poseidon 3262 temperature sensor from the HW group. I already connected the device to the network, configured it for ICMP and SNMP access, added a Poseidon device to my Monitor one map and compiled the accompanying Poseidon MIB file so that the Poseidon nodes became available in my MIB tree.

Step 1. Discovering the SNMP functionality of the Poseidon sensor.

The first thing I usually do when building Shooters is starting the MIB browser and run an “Inspect” on the device in order to get an idea about what information I can get from the device. See the screen shot below.

As can be seen in the screen shot, the Poseidon sensor stores its information in 3 different SNMP tables. There is a table (tempTable) showing the current temperature for each probe (one Poseidon box supports multiple probes), a table showing the last alarm message (tsAlarm) and there's a table (tempSetupTable) that can be used to configure alarm parameters (Poseidon sensors can do some basic monitoring themselves but in this article we'll leave this to Monitor one).

For a better understanding of the supported values I will first build a table Shooter that shows me all values that can be collected from the sensor through SNMP. I will need this information to build the Shooters that I need for my monitoring.

To build the basic Shooter that displays all collected values in a list follow these steps:

1. Right-click the HWGroup objectID in the MIB tree and select Create a new Shooter|Table
2. A New Shooter properties dialog box pops up requesting for a Shooter name
3. Because I'm building a basic temporary Shooter I keep the proposed name “hwgroup” and click Ok
4. Ready

To start the new Shooter, right-click the device on the map, select Shooters/Properties and double-click the "hwgroup" Shooter icon on the Foreground Shooters tab. See the screen shot below:

Step 2. Building a SnipMon gauge Shooter that displays the current temperature.

As mentioned before, I want the current temperature being displayed in a SnipMon gauge so that I can always keep an eye on it. In the table Shooter output you can see that the Poseidon sensor that I'm using only has one probe connected. The OID and instance that I need for my SnipMon Shooter is tempValue.1

There's also another field in the tree showing the current temperature, namely tempString.1 (the current temperature as a formatted string). Because SnipMon Shooters only support counter or integer values, we'll use the tempValue field.

To build the SnipMon Shooter:

1. Switch to Designer mode, right-click the Poseidon sensor on the map and choose Define Shooters (Manually)
2. Right-click anywhere in the Shooters box and select Add a Shooter
3. Choose a name for the new Shooter and enter it into the ShooterName box. I will use the name “Current_Temperature” for my Shooter.
4. Choose the Shooter type from the ShooterType drop down box. I will use SnipMon Gauge 60 (one sample every 60 seconds)
5. Select the RAW radio button from the Native Monitor one Shooters tab (We're interested in the actual temperature, not in the increase or decrease of it).
6. Press the save button.
7. Click (to select) the new Shooter in the Shooters box and verify whether it gets focus by checking the contents of the fields right above the MIB tree box.
8. Browse to the HWGroup branch in the MIB tree, right-click it and select Inspect
9. Browse to the tempValue field in the tree, right-click it and select Add to the selected Shooter. The Add/Modify a ... window opens.
10. Enter “.1” into the Instance box (Append radiobutton, instance field) (The value “.1” is taken from the screenshot above!). The tempValue field is added as a ShooterTarget and is listed in the Shooter-targets box.
11. Untag the Show this field on screen checkbox
12. Press the Add/Modify button.
13. As can be seen in the screen shot, the value of the tempValue field is 10 times the actual value (in SNMP, there is no syntax type representing real values). I'll use a Formula to divide the collected value by 10.
14. Right-click the Shooter-targets box and select Add a Formula
15. Enter “A/10” into the Formula (Infix notation) control and also enter a name for the “Formula result into the Result name control. See the screen shot below:
    
    
16. Click the Save button.
17. The Shooter is now ready and can be activated. First close the Shooter definition window!
18. Right-click the Poseidon sensor on the map and select Shooters/Properties
19. Select the Background Shooters tab, right-click the new Shooter in the Available box and select Start this Shooter for...
20. Close the Shooter/Properties window and after a minute or so, you should see the new SnipMon showing the current temperature. Moving the mouse pointer over the SnipMon surface will display the last measured value in a hint box.
    
    

Step 3. Building a Threshold Shooter for the Poseidon 3262 probe that generates an alert when the temperature drops below 15°C or exceeds 25°C.

1. Switch to Designer mode, right-click the Poseidon sensor on the map and choose Define Shooters (Manually)
2. Right-click anywhere in the Shooters box and select Add a Shooter
3. Enter the name for the new Shooter into the ShooterName box. I will use the name “Min_Max_Temp” for my Shooter.
4. Choose the Shooter type from the ShooterType drop down box. I will use Threshold 60
5. Press the save button.
6. Click (to select) the new Shooter in the Shooters box.
7. Browse to the HWGroup branch in the MIB tree, right-click it and select Inspect
8. Browse to the tempValue field in the tree, right-click it and select Add to the selected Shooter. The Add/Modify a ... window opens.
9. Tag the All Instances radiobutton from the Instance section. (This Shooter is built so that if the Poseidon has more that one probe connected, it will work for all connected probes!)
10. Untag the Show this field on screen checkbox
11. Press the Add/Modify button.
12. Right-click the Shooter-targets box and select Add a Formula
13. Enter “A/10” into the Formula (Infix notation) control and also enter a name for the “Formula result into the Result name control. I choose “Min”. See the screen shot below:
    
    
14. Select the "<" operator, enter 15 in the value box and click the Raw radiobutton.
15. Optional: Use the Threshold message controls to define a custom message or let the system generate its own default message.
16. Click the Save button.
17. Add a second Formula to the Shooter which takes care of the upper limit of the temperature boundary
18. The Shooter and Shooter-target boxes should now look like:
    
    
19. The Shooter is now ready and can be activated. First close the Shooter definition window!
20. Right-click the Poseidon sensor on the map and select Shooters/Properties
21. Select the Background Shooters tab, right-click the new Shooter in the Available box and select Start this Shooter for...
22. Open the Threshold control window by selecting Options|Threshold control from the menu on the Monitor one control panel.
23. After a couple of minutes you should see something like:
    
    
24. And when the current temperature gets outside the range 15° to 25°C:
    
    

Some final notes:

I frequently receive a support question why Monitor one doesn't send out an alert when a certain value exceeds the Threshold value. In 90% of the cases, this is due to incorrect alerting settings.

Generally spoken, Monitor one sends out an alert if the “weight of the Class causing the event” multiplied by “the weight of the event causing the event” exceeds the “alerting threshold”. See the screen shots below.

In my system I have defined the class settings of the Poseidon device as:

The “Class priority level” is set to 10 (the highest value possible).

The Alerting tab of my system looks like:

As you can see for the Sensor all event types, except the Sensitivity event, will generate an Alert!