Monitoring Concepts

Review basic concepts like Monitoring Engines, Node State Monitoring, and how to disable monitoring.

The main purpose of NetCrunch is to monitor your network. It also offers you documenting and organizing services.

So, everything in NetCrunch is well organized - the Atlas root is at the top, the views go below, then there are nodes, and finally, on the lowest level, there are various objects and their performance metrics and status objects.

Monitoring Engines

Monitoring Engine is a software component responsible for the specific type of monitoring.

Monitoring Engines simplifies the monitoring configuration, as they are responsible for a certain monitoring channel.

For example, you might define many things being monitored using the SNMP Engine. Still, all of them share the same configuration parameters for a particular node such as SNMP port and profile to be used. A very similar situation happens with other operating systems where the configuration contains credentials for the connection.

If you are familiar with other concepts such as sensors or probes, please be advised that they are much more comparable to Monitoring Packs in NetCrunch.

NetCrunch Monitoring Engines

SNMP - requires SNMP to be configured on node
Windows - Windows monitor must be enabled
Linux - Linux monitor must be enabled
macOS - macOS monitor must be enabled
BSD - BSD monitor must be enabled
Solaris - Solaris monitor must be enabled
Inventory - requires Windows OS monitor to be enabled
VMware ESX/i & vCenter - monitoring of vCenter, ESXi and virtual machines
Network Services (MPMON) - multi-protocol monitor
Flow Analyzer
Sensor Engine - provide various scalable sensor monitors

Monitoring Sensors

The list of sensors is constantly growing.

See full list in Sensors

Node State Monitoring

The central part of monitoring is determining the node state. Everything being monitored on the node depends on its state.

When the node is considered to be DOWN, the node's monitoring almost stops until NetCrunch recognizes that the node is responding again.

NetCrunch determines the node state upon monitoring of network services (see: Network Services Monitoring).

Read more about Monitoring of Network Nodes

Managing Monitoring Engines

When you go to Node SettingsMonitoring, you will get the list of monitors available (bound) to the node. There you can manage engine properties for the node.

Monitoring by Device Type

Some monitoring packs use Device Type information (especially SNMP devices) to be enabled for a specific device only. In the case of the SNMP monitoring, the program automatically detects Device Type upon SNMP object data.

Monitoring Issues

Monitoring Issue is a problem related to the monitoring process, like missing credentials or improper response from the device.

We decided to make issues related to the monitoring process to stand out from other problems related to your network services and devices. They are usually related to wrong or missing credentials or Windows security settings.

Disabling Monitoring

As the monitoring is enabled by default, it's more interesting to know how you can disable it. You can disable it at any level.

Disabling the Atlas

Atlas Properties

You can disable monitoring for the entire Atlas. You can disable it for some time (for maintenance) or schedule being disabled for a future time range.

Disabling the Network

IP NetworkProperties

You can go to IP Networks and disable monitoring of a specific Network indefinitely, or just for a given time period.

Automatically by Dependencies

NetCrunch manages monitoring dependencies that should reflect connection dependencies. If properly set, NetCrunch automatically disables the monitoring of nodes depending on a certain connection. This helps to lower monitoring traffic and also prevents false alerts.