Configuring SNMP monitoring for the IX4-200D and IX2-200 in SolarWinds Orion

As you’ve all read in previous postings, I’m the proud owner of the new Iomega IX4-200D. After stressing it for two other blog posts, I was playing some more with all the features and tried to configure SNMP monitoring of the box. As monitoring application I have SolardWinds Orion Network Performance Monitor and I can easily add Windows servers, Cisco switches and routers but I couldn’t get the IX4 to report properly.

I had trouble figuring out how to use the credentials you enter on the settings page of the IX4. After some searching on google I came across this post: http://thwack.com/media/p/78497.aspx in which the snmpd.conf settings of a Solaris machine are explained and how they should be used in SolarWinds Orion NPM.

To summarize it all in a few easy steps:

1- Configure SNMP on the IX4. Go to the web interface and then to settings -> network services -> SNMP. Check the “enable snmp” box and enter a username and a password. For trap receivers you should set the IP address of the server that will monitor your device. Click apply to activate these settings.

2- Go to the SolarWinds Orion monitoring page. Click HOME and see if you have nodes tree whit a button “Manage Nodes”. Click on “Manage Nodes” then in the next screen on “Add Node”. In the “Define Node” section enter the IP address. In the “SNMP Info” section set the SNMP version to “SNMPv3”. You will see that more fields will now be available.

3- For the “SNMPv3 Username” field enter the username from step 1. Leave the field “SNMPv3 Context” empty. Really empty that is, no spaces allowed. Set the “SNMPv3 Authentication Method” to MD5. The set “Password / Key” to the password you entered in step 1. Set “SNMPv3 Privacy / Encryption Method” to DES56 and for “Password / Key” again use the password from step 1.

4- The rest of the fields you can leave empty and skip to the bottom of the page and hit the “next” button. You will now see a new page that allows you to choose the resources you want to monitor. You can now skip the last steps “Add Pollers” and “Change Properties” by just hitting next and finish. Your IX4 is now monitored by SolarWinds Orion NPM.

For the IX2, the procedure is exactly the same.

4 thoughts on “Configuring SNMP monitoring for the IX4-200D and IX2-200 in SolarWinds Orion

  1. This really helped me…thank you! The problem is that the only SNMP v3 parameters I can find are not the ones I actually need. I can measure CPU, uptime, http response times etc etc…..but what I really need is to detect an imminent shutdown. If the UPS runs low on power the ix4-200d will automatically shutdown. Surely this should be a trappable event so that I can then react appropriately elsewhere. I can detect that the NAS is no longer available via a trap on SNMP Uptime for example, but ideally I want to know as soon as the NAS starts a shutdown. A hub restart could trigger a faulty trap if I rely on uptime. I can’t find a way to detect this. So if anyone has found a way, I would greatly appreciate it. 

  2. It should be noted that with Orion that ONLY the Read Only section needs to be filled out. It won’t work with Read Only AND Read Write filled out. Some of us are dumbasses and try to “do more than necessary” and have to have very specific instructions. Otherwise, this was SPOT ON. Thanks man!

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