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Manually creating a new Shooter

Creating a new Shooter by hand is the most complex but also the most flexible and powerful way of building new Shooters. The steps described below guide you through the steps involved.

As mentioned before, Shooters are defined at the Class level. Nevertheless, when building new Shooters, the existence and use of a test device is a requirement. Monitor one needs a test device in order to find the MIB nodes supported by that Class of device.

Step 1. Open the Define <ClassName> Shooters window…

1. Switch to Designer mode.
2. Select Edit|Manage Classes from the menu of the main window. The "Manage classes" window opens.
3. Right-click a Class icon and select Define Shooters from the menu.
4. The Shooter configuration window opens. If there are already devices of the selected Class on the network map, Monitor one will use one of them as the test device. The IPaddress and Community name of this test device are copied to the fields in the Test and Inspect portion of the window. If no test device could be found on the map, the fields are left blank and the IP address and community of the test device must be provided manually. Ensure that you choose a test device that is a member of the selected Class! Choosing a test device of another Class makes no sense because you would create Shooters that possibly do not work!

OR

1. Switch to Designer mode.
2. Right-click a device icon on the map and select Define Shooters from the right-click menu.
3. The Shooter configuration window opens. The IPaddress and Community name of the right-clicked device are automatically copied to the fields of the Test and Inspect box. The image below shows a snapshot of the "Define <Class name> Shooters" window.
   
   
   
   The window contains 4 panes. The one at the left shows the MIB tree. The Node descriptions box (top right) is used to display information about the selected MIB node in the MIB tree. The Test and Inspect pane is used for accessing the test device and the bottom right pane provides information on the existing Shooters and their Targets.

Step 2. Start building the Shooter body (container).

1. Right-click anywhere in the Shooters box and select Add a Shooter.
2. The "Add/Modify a Shooter" window opens. See the snapshot below.
3. Enter the correct information into all boxes and press the Save button to save the new Shooter.
   
   

ShooterName

A Shooter name may consist of up to 30 characters (no spaces) and must be unique within the selected Class.

Shooter-type

Select a Shooter-type by selecting the type from the Shooter-type listbox.

Speedshooter (Add this Shooter to a Device's right-Click menu)

Speedshooters provide a way for easily accessing the most frequently used Shooters for a device. When for a Shooter the SpeedShooter property is set to true (checked) then it appears as a menu item in the device’s right-click menu. Only foreground Shooters can be marked as "SpeedShooter". Do not set the SpeedShooter property by default. Mark only the most frequently used Shooters as SpeedShooter to prevent over-configured, badly readable right-click menus!

Port to use for SNMP data retrieval.

Some vendors use alternate ports for their SNMP agents. The default SNMP port has port-number 161. By default Monitor one uses the SNMP port defined at the Class level but you can use the Port to use… box to overrule the Class setting and define an alternate port at the Shooter level.

Active Period (When will this Shooter be active)

Most networks experience different load during daytime than during the night. In order to minimize the chance of incorrect or superfluous alerting, you can fine-tune Threshold monitoring by specifying an active period for a threshold Shooter.
When the From setting is greater than the Till setting, an active period during the night is assumed.

Additional Shooter settings

The most important controls from this box are the RAW and the DELTA controls. Use these controls to define how to interpret received SNMP values. Select DELTA if you are interested in the difference between the last measured value and the previous one. Use DELTA if you - for example - want to show the traffic of an interface in bytes/sec in a graph. Use RAW if you are interested in raw values like room temperature, CPU utilization and UPS output-power.
Be aware that the Additional Shooter settings box contains two tabs: one for all native Monitor one Shooters and one for RRD Shooters!

Step 3. Define one or more Shooter targets (SNMP requests) and add them to the Shooter.

1. Browse through the MIB tree and select the MIB node to add to the Shooter.
2. Right-click the node and choose Inspect to verify whether the selected node is supported by the test device.
3. If the test turns out to be positive (the node turns green), right-click the node again and choose Add to the selected Shooter.
4. The "Add/Modify a <ClassName> Shooter-target" window opens.
5. Depending on the selected Shooter-type, fields and/or boxes are either enabled or disabled. Select the instance to use and provide valid data into all mandatory fields before pressing the Add/Modify button.
6. The Shooter-target is added to the Shooter and appears in the Shooter-targets box.

About Formulas

Formulas provide a way to manipulate SNMP values before displaying or using them. With a Formula you can for example change the format of data (from bytes/s to Mbytes/sec etc). A formula can be added to a Shooter as if it was a Shooter-target. A Shooter can contain more than one formula.

Not all Shooter types support the Formula option!

Using a formula requires entering one or more arguments. Arguments are pieces of data used as input for the formula. You can use retrieved SNMP values and constant values as arguments.

Formula's must be entered in infix notation. For instance ((a+b)/c/8)*100 or (A+(B/C))/(D-A)*35 etc. The characters A, B, C etc represent retrieved SNMP values (target data). You can also enter constant values directly, as in: (A+B)/10

Adding a formula to a Shooter

1. Right-click anywhere in the Shooter-targets box and select Add a formula.
2. The "Add/Modify formula: <Formula name>" window opens. See the snapshot below.
3. Fill out the form and press the Save button to save the new formula. The formula is added (as if it were a Shooter-target) to the target list.
   
   

Available OIDs

The Available OIDs box shows the table of available arguments that can be used in the formula.

Formula

Use the Formula box to enter the formula in infix notation. Be aware of the following limitations:

• Allowed operators: * / + -
• Allowed operands: The characters A..Z (not case-sensitive!), Positive integers.

Result name

Use the Result name box to assign a name to the result of the calculations. This name appears in the legend of the Graph or Meter etc..

Examples

In the examples described below, we use the retrieved values from:

• A = ifInOctets.3 – incoming bytes on interface 3
• B = ifOutOctets.3 – outgoing bytes on interface 3
• C = ifSpeed.3 – interface speed of interface 3 in bits/sec

1. To show the sum of incoming and outgoing bytes per second in KB/s:
--> Formula = (A+B)/1024

2. You cannot enter fractions directly into the formula box, so we need a trick. If you want to use the fraction value 0.5:
--> Formula = (A+B)*(5/10)

3. You cannot enter negative values directly into the formula box, so again a trick. If you want to use negative constant values like -1:
--> Formula = (A+B)*(0-1)

4. If you want to calculate the utilization of interface 3. Note that ifSpeed is in bits/s!
--> Formula = (A+B)/(c/8)*100 OR ((a+b)/c)*800 OR ((a+b)*800)/c

The utilization can be calculated by adding ifInOctets to ifOutOctets and dividing the result by the speed in bytes/s. After that, multiply the result by 100 to get the utilization!

In the graph below, we used a formula to negate the ifOutOctets. The result gives a perfect idea of a server’s NIC "Incoming and Outgoing byes" ratio.

We used the following formula: