Running Head 1

OpenNMS


OPENNMS 2
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ............................................................................................................................3
What is OpenNMS..............................................................................................................................3
Features ............................................................................................................................................4
Automated and Directed Discovery .......................................................................................................... 4
Event and Notification Management ........................................................................................................ 4
Service Assurance ..................................................................................................................................... 5
Performance Measurement ...................................................................................................................... 5
User Accounts ........................................................................................................................................... 6
Requirements ....................................................................................................................................6
Installation ........................................................................................................................................7
Configuration .....................................................................................................................................7
Auto Discovery .......................................................................................................................................... 8
Node Adding Manually ............................................................................................................................. 9
User Accounts ......................................................................................................................................... 10
Gathering Data ................................................................................................................................ 10
Charts ...................................................................................................................................................... 10
Response Time ........................................................................................................................................ 11
Events ...................................................................................................................................................... 12
Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................... 13
Glossary........................................................................................................................................... 14
References ....................................................................................................................................... 16


OPENNMS 3
Executive Summary
Network management is important in modern day computer networks. When selecting a
network management tool it is important to find one that is affordable and one that will support
all of the devices in the network. OpenNMS is one such network monitoring tool that is a very
inexpensive and versatile tool that most companies can utilize.
Note that this paper refers to online tutorials offered by OpenNMS, all of these tutorials
can be found online by going to their site at http://www.opennms.org/ then clicking on their "Get
Support" button then going to their wiki section.
What is OpenNMS
"OpenNMS is the world's first enterprise grade network management application
platform developed under the open source model" ("The OpenNMS Project", 2014). While this
statement may sound confusing it can be quite easily understood. We will start with open source
model. Open source is software that is built to be shared. The software can be used for free and
modified by anyone. This means that OpenNMS is 100% free. There are no licensing fees, no
service fees, and no upgrade fees. Enterprise grade means that OpenNMS is designed to support
large enterprise sized networks. OpenNMS is powerful and flexible to fit the demands of an
enterprise network. OpenNMS is not just for enterprise networks, with the cost being free,
OpenNMS is also an excellent choice for smaller networks. World's first is because OpenNMS
is the first enterprise level open source network management application. The OpenNMS project
was first started in July of 1999 so they have years of experience built into their software.
OPENNMS 4
Features
OpenNMS has many features that make it a viable network management solution.
According to OpenNMS their "features list is long and constantly growing" ("The OpenNMS
Project", 2014). OpenNMS does break down their features into four main areas to aid with
understanding what some of the features are. These features areas are automated and directed
discovery, event and notification management, service assurance, and performance
measurement. A fourth useful feature of OpenNMS is their user accounts.
Automated and Directed Discovery
To aid in configuration of the network OpenNMS supports auto discovery of systems or
devices on the network. This auto discovery will also learn any network services that are being
provided in the network by the devices. While auto discovery is a common way to find devices
and services that are running on the network, OpenNMS also supports manually adding devices.
This allows the administrator to have full control over what devices get added and what services
should be monitored on those devices.
Event and Notification Management
An event is when something happens in the network. Events could be good like adding
new devices to the network (when you want to add a new device that is) or it could be bad like a
system restarting or a fault or failure somewhere in the network. OpenNMS is designed to
generate such events or receive events from other devices such as simple network management
protocol (SNMP) and traps which are events sent by devices when they have an issue.
With OpenNMS being used to handle events it can be configured to generate trouble
tickets based on the events. Depending on the event sent or received OpenNMS can also send
OPENNMS 5
out notifications or alerts. These notifications can be sent via e-mail or short message service
(SMS). SMS is widely known as text message that is normally received on a cell phone.
OpenNMS also supports communication with other trouble ticketing software such as Atlassian
JIRA, Best Practical Solutions RT, Concursive ConcourseSuite, Intuit QuickBase, and OTRS
(Open Ticket Request System).
Service Assurance
Service level agreements or SLAs are important in management. Every company wants
to make sure they are meeting their SLA or receiving the services they should be based off their
SLA. OpenNMS knows how important SLAs are to companies so they offer ways to monitor
the network to ensure that SLAs are met. To do this OpenNMS can perform ICMP request
(ping) and port checks. They also support complex website monitoring and e-mail testing. All
of these are used to ensure that connection speeds and services are up and running. To verify
that the SLA is met OpenNMS allows the creation of detailed reports to be generated to show the
availability of the services. Open NMS also allows configuration on how often these checks are
made and configurations to keep track of scheduled downtime. This allows the administrator or
manager to easily identify if the services they are providing or receiving are meeting the agreed
upon SLA.
Performance Measurement
OpenNMS offers many performance measurement options. Some of these options
support the commonly used SNMP and Java management extensions or JMX protocols. Both of
these protocols are used to manage and monitor devices or services on a network. OpenNMS
can also monitor hyper text transfer protocol (HTTP) or better known as web pages. OpenNMS
OPENNMS 6
can be configured to check a web page and extract values to check if the web site is still running
with the correct content displayed.
All of this performance data that get collected can be sorted and tested against thresholds.
These thresholds can be configured with "high" and "low" and can generate events based the
results. This data that get collected over time can also be graphed. The graphs can be easily read
by the administrator and can help identify any problems with the network that may exist.
User Accounts
The support for multiple user accounts is another good feature of OpenNMS. OpenNMS
supports multiple user accounts with different permissions. Users can be created and placed in
different groups with full administration permissions or just permissions to manage certain
devices. These users can also be set to be on call so that OpenNMS knows who to send any
alerts to.
Requirements
The system requirements for OpenNMS are quite low. The basic requirements are a 1
Ghz Pentium III processor, 256MB RAM, 300MB disk space plus 2MB per device and an
additional 2GB of disk space for the default LOG configuration. To put it simple, OpenNMS
can be run on older equipment and prevents the need of purchasing a new server to use for
network management. Larger enterprise size networks will need a more powerful system to be
able to support tens of thousands of devices. The administration portion of OpenNMS is all web
based. This means that the administrators can just log into OpenNMS via a web browser. There
is no need to install any special administration software. The web server portion of OpenNMS is
OPENNMS 7
built into their software removing the need for an external web server or any secondary software
to host the web server. OpenNMS was written in the Java language. Java is a very versatile
computer language that is supported on many different operating systems. This allows
OpenNMS to run on any operating system (OS) that supports what is known as the Java
Software Developers Kit or Java SDK. Java SDK is supported on many different operating
systems to include Linux, Red Hat, Debian, Fedora, Mandriva, SuSE, Solaris, Mac OS X, and
Windows 2000, XP, 2003, 7, 2008. This means that OpenNMS will run on almost any operating
system including the popular free versions of Linux. OpenNMS does require a SQL database to
operate. PostgreSQL is the recommended and supported SQL software for OpenNMS.
PostgreSQL is a good choice to use for OpenNMS because like OpenNMS PostgreSQL is open
source so it is free. PostgreSQL is also widely supported on many different operating systems
allowing it to be just as versatile as OpenNMS.
Installation
Installation is quite easy with OpenNMS. OpenNMS offers tutorials online on how to
install OpenNMS. The tutorials are written for most common operating systems to install on.
These are RPM based Linux OS's, Debian based Linux OS's, Windows, Mac OS X, and they
even have a section for other OS installs. This extra other section has some tips and tutorials for
various installs that can become difficult to follow at times. It is recommended to use one of the
common OS installs and follow their directions for the proper OS.
Configuration
Configuration for OpenNMS can be a bit difficult. There is a lot to look at when first
logging into the administration panel. Initial configurations are made easier by OpenNMS
because they offer some tutorials online on how to configure their software. Following these
OPENNMS 8
tutorials will help the administrator in configuring OpenNMS and getting their network
management tool running. Most of the configurations are made by logging into OpenNMS
through a web browser by entering the IP address of the OpenNMS server followed by
"/opennms" (ex http://192.168.0.15/opennms). Some configurations require files to be edited on
the server itself and the method of editing those files will vary depending on the OS that
OpenNMS was installed on.
Auto Discovery
Auto Discovery is one of the simplest ways to add nodes to OpenNMS. A node is a
device or server that OpenNMS is set to monitor. To configure auto discovery an administrator
must go to the Admin tab while logged in to the OpenNMS web site. From here they can go to
Configure Discovery and make changes for what they want auto discovered. Figure 1 is an
example of the auto discovery window. The administrator can enter an IP range of computer
address to have OpenNMS search and how often to search for new devices. There is also an
option to include URLs for websites and an exclude option to prevent auto discovery on certain
address in the range selected.
OPENNMS 9
fig 1
Node Adding Manually
There are a few steps to adding nodes that are to be monitored. Adding nodes manually
is done from the Add Node tab. The first requirement to add nodes is having a Requisition. This
is basically a group where all of the managed nodes will be organized. Once created the
requisition can then be edited. Here is where a new node can be added by clicking Add Node.
The node can then be named and assigned interfaces (IP of the device). It can also be added to a
category like router or switch and given extra assets like hard drive info or processor info. After
adding a new node clicking synchronize will add the new nodes to OpenNMS. Figure 2 is an
example of adding a node manually to OpenNMS
OPENNMS 10
fig 2
User Accounts
User accounts are configured from the Admin tab under Configure Users, Groups and
On-Call Roles. From here users can be added or removed, added to groups which set what they
are allowed to manage and configured for who is on call. On call is so that OpenNMS knows
who to send alerts to.
This is the basic configuration of OpenNMS. To add SNMP support or customize
polling begins to involve server configurations which is not covered in this paper.
Gathering Data
With a few configurations set network data can now be collected. There are a few charts
and graphs that can be viewed to show the status of the network or a node. Events and alarms
can also be viewed to see how the network is doing.
Charts
OPENNMS 11
Charts are viewed by clicking on the Charts tab. The default charts show how many
alarms have gone off, outages in the last seven days, and node inventory amounts. Other charts
can be added through advanced server configuration. The default charts will allow an
administrator to see what devices are down and how many alarms have been going off. Figure 3
shows an example of the default charts in OpenNMS.
fig 3
Response Time
Response time can also be graphed. The response time graph shows how long it took for
a node to respond when OpenNMS checked that node. This is important as the response time
OPENNMS 12
can be used to indentify issues with slow or congested networks. These graphs are timed based
so that the administrator can see what times the response check was slow or fast. Figure 4 is an
example of a response time graph.
fig 4
Events
Events can be viewed by clicking the events tab in OpenNMS. Because of the number of
events displayed it is possible to view all events or so a search and just search for specific events.
The events can be monitored to know if a node went down or if there are any issues with a node
or the network. Some events can trigger notifications if notifications is configured. Figure 5 is
an example of the events.
OPENNMS 13
fig 5
Conclusion
OpenNMS is a very powerful enterprise level network management application.
OpenNMS has many features to include automatic discovery, event notification and
management, service assurance, performance measurement, and more. OpenNMS runs on many
different platforms and is not very difficult to install. Configuration does have a learning curve
to it but with good online support configuration can be figured out. OpenNMS also offers
various graphs and charts to aid the administrator in viewing data collected from OpenNMS to
OPENNMS 14
help the administrator keep the network in good working order. And best of all, OpenNMS is
completely free to use with no licensing costs or software to buy.
Glossary blah
Event - Something that happens in the network, this could be a discovery of a new device, outage
of a device, fault, error, etc...
Java - Computer language created by a company called Oracle. Java is very powerful and
widely supported on various systems.
JMX - Java Management Extensions, a protocol used to manage and monitor network devices,
applications, and services
Linux - Open source operating system. Commonly used for servers.
LOG - A file that contains messages about a system.
Mac OS X - Operating system used by Apple computers and servers
Network Management/Monitoring Tool - A tool used to aid an administrator in managing a
network and monitoring a network for issues
Node - Can be a device, service, or anything configured to be monitored.
Open Source - Free to use software that falls under a special license that can be modified by
anyone.
Operating System (OS) - A piece of software that is run on a device that allows a user to interact
with the device. The OS also manages software that the user can interact with.
OPENNMS 15
PostgreSQL - An open source SQL database server software with support for many different OSs
SDK - Software Developers Kit, Used by developers to build software and used to run some
applications
SNMP - Simple Network Management Protocol, used to manage and monitor services and
devices on a computer network.
SQL - A database language that is commonly used.
Windows - Commonly used operating system that is easy to use.

OPENNMS 16
References
The Open Source Initiative | Open Source Initiative. (2014). Retrieved from
http://opensource.org/
The OpenNMS Project. (2014). Retrieved from http://www.opennms.org/