White Papers

VRTX Alert Management
SNMP Manager
A manager or management system is a separate entity that is responsible for communicating with the
SNMP agent implemented network devices. This is typically a computer that is used to run one or
more network management systems.
SNMP Manager does the following functions:
 Walks agents
 Gets response from the agents
 Sets data in agents
 Acknowledges asynchronous events from the agents
SNMP–Managed Devices
A managed device or the network element is a part of the network/VRTX Chassis components that
requires some form of monitoring and management. For example, storage components, fan
components, IO components, PCIe components, and PSUs.
SNMP Agent
An agent is a program tied to the managed element. Enabling an agent allows it to collect the
management information database from the managed device locally, and makes it available to the
SNMP manager through the queries it gets through the manger. These agents could be standard (for
example, Net-SNMP).
SNMP agents do the following:
 Gathers management information about its local environment
 Saves and broadcasts the management information as defined in the MIB
 Alerts an event to the SNMP manager
 Acts as a substitute for some non–SNMP―manageable nodes
Management Information Base (MIB)
The managed device properties are described in the information database and is tracked by an SNMP
agent. The database is shared by the manager and the agent. The manager gets the properties of the
managed device through the agent with the help of a shared database known as MIB (Management
Information Base).
MIB contains the configuration values and statistical values defined for the managed devices, which
could be standard or private. The Agent helps get the data through the queries by the Manager using
the MIB.