Configuring Network Topology

Network Topology detection allows Opsview to discover connections between monitored hosts and neighboring network devices to build up a topology map. For detection to work correctly, the following prerequisites must be met:

• There must be one or more SNMP-enabled Opsview Hosts (v2c or v3 only). Opsview uses the SNMP protocol to extract neighbor information, and will discover neighbors directly adjacent to any SNMP-enabled Host that is monitored by a given Collector Cluster. The ‘aes256’ and ‘aes256c’ SNMPv3 privacy protocol options are not currently supported.
• Network devices must have either the LLDP or CDP protocol enabled so that they are visible to the SNMP-enabled Hosts.
• Opsview Hosts within any enabled Collector Clusters must be using IPv4 addresses, or DNS addresses that resolve to IPv4 addresses.

Configuring Collector Clusters

Before Network Topology detection can run from a Collector Cluster, you must enable it via the Features Enabled menu for that Cluster within the Clusters tab on the Menubar > Configuration > Monitoring Collectors page.

Simply click the toggle to enable Network Topology on the cluster.

Once this is enabled, when the next scheduled detection runs, if the prerequisites are met, a Network Topology map will be generated for that cluster. It can be accessed by clicking the menu icon for that cluster and then selecting View Topology:

You might not be able to immediately view the Network Topology map for a cluster - see Troubleshooting - I cannot “View Topology” for a particular cluster.

Run Network Topology detection manually

To run Network Topology detection manually rather than waiting for the next scheduled run, invoke the following command as the opsview user:

/opt/opsview/orchestrator/bin/orchestratordetectnetworktopologies

If this is requested when Network Topology detection is already in progress, it will be ignored.

Warning

By default, Network Topology detection will be scheduled to run at 2:00am every day. You may wish to change this schedule using the instructions below.

Configure scheduled Network Topology detection

Making changes to your configuration

To configure the Network Topology schedule, you need to edit the /opt/opsview/deploy/etc/user_vars.yml file and add or uncomment the following lines, changing the values as required:

# Enable or disable network topology detection - if enabled, the network topology detection
# will run regularly as configured, otherwise it will only run when manually triggered.
opsview_network_topology_schedule_enabled: True

# Minute - Single numeric value: 0 to 59
opsview_network_topology_schedule_minute: "0"

# Hour - value e.g. "2", or list of numeric values 0 to 23 (e.g. [2,14]), or "*" for every hour
opsview_network_topology_schedule_hour: [0,12]

# Day of Week - value e.g. "2", or list of numeric values 0 to 6 (e.g. [1,3,5]), where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday, or "*" for every day of the week
opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_week: "*"

# Day of Month - value e.g. "2", or list of numeric values 1 to 31 (e.g. [1,15]), or "*" for every day of the month
#opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_month: "*"

Note

Only one of opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_month or opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_week can be specified, not both. If neither is specified, the default behaviour is to run every day.

We recommend setting opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_month to a value of 28 or below, since higher could result in detection missing out on months with fewer days.

Examples:

To run Network Topology detection at 8:05pm every Monday:

opsview_network_topology_schedule_enabled: True
opsview_network_topology_schedule_minute: "5"
opsview_network_topology_schedule_hour: [20]
opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_week: [1]

To run Network Topology detection on the hour every hour every day of the week:

opsview_network_topology_schedule_enabled: True
opsview_network_topology_schedule_minute: "0"
opsview_network_topology_schedule_hour: "*"
opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_week: "*"

To run Network Topology detection at 30 minutes past the hour, every hour, on the 3rd and 5th days of each month:

opsview_network_topology_schedule_enabled: True
opsview_network_topology_schedule_minute: "30"
opsview_network_topology_schedule_hour: "*"
opsview_network_topology_schedule_day_of_month: [3, 5]

Disabling scheduled Network Topology detection

To disable scheduled Network Topology detection, add or amend following line in /opt/opsview/deploy/etc/user_vars.yml:

opsview_network_topology_schedule_enabled: False

Applying your configuration changes

Run the following command (as root, and after activating Opsview) every time you change your configuration:

# install and configure the Network Topology Schedule
cd /opt/opsview/deploy
./bin/opsview-deploy lib/playbooks/network-topology-install.yml

Ensure that the optional feature is included in your Opsview license.

Advanced Network Topology configuration options

Further configuration options can be set via the configuration of your Orchestrator, see Orchestrator Configuration for more details.