OpenSourceNetworkManagementServer

ONMS is the combination of the very best open-source network management tools pre-installed on Ubuntu Linux. Project on SourceForge.net : https://sourceforge.net/projects/onms/

Features

Summary: Nediva will discover your network devices and use them to gather all kinds of useful information about your network. This information can then be viewed through a beautiful web-interface.

  • Automated Network Discovery
    • Automatically discover network devices and learn how they connect to each other (network topology)*
  • Device Management
    • Quickly telnet to a switch with just a few clicks
    • Make bulk configuration changes to many devices at once
    • Archive device configurations and report configuration changes
  • Monitoring
    • Performance
      • Graph interface usage
      • CPU utilization of network devices
    • Availibility
      • Poll network devices
      • Send email or SMS alerts when a device goes down
    • Errors
      • Receive and display SNMP Traps from devices
      • Display interface error rates
    • Logging
      • Receive and display Syslog messages from devices
  • Reporting

    • Location of users on the network (DNS-->IP-->MAC-->Switch-->Port)

    • Network devices
      • Device name, type, model number, serial number
      • Software version running on the device
    • IP addresses
      • See which IP addresses are being used, and which ones are available

Note: NeDi works best with Cisco network devices. It does support other vendors, but this is currently limited to a small selection of devices. In the future, NeDi will support the most common network devices from multiple vendors. You can help NeDi support your equipment by working with the developers.

Documentation

  • Start some documents on this wiki, then convert to PDF when done
  • What documentation is needed?
    • Perhaps a Nedi user manual can be created, then made available on the main Nedi page

How To Make the Nedi Appliance

* Create a virtual machine

  • Ubuntu 5.10
  • Use NAT (simplest to use)
  • Disk space = 20.0 GB, leave the checkboxes blank (What should this amount be?)
  • 256 MB memory (What should this amount be?)

* Install Ubuntu Linux (5.10)

  • Default install

* Remove unneeded software packages

* Install NeDi

  • Follow Ubuntu install procedure
  • Make sure to use SSL
  • Setup syslog.pl and trap.pl, configure to start on bootup.

    • syslog.pl is very simple! As root (since port < 1024), start with -v to check whether you receive messages and If ok, stop it and start it with -D to daemonize.

    • trap.pl is called by snmptrapd. This needs to be specified in /etc/snmp/snmptrapd.conf like this:
      • traphandle default /usr/bin/perl /opt/nedi/trap.pl
  • Install a TFTP server

Network Discovery Suite (Nedi) User Manual

  • Start manual here, include many screenshots.

Tasks

Done

  • Determine how we will communicate
    • This wiki
    • MSN Messenger in a group chat room
      • Good times to talk are 16:00 - 24:00 CET (which is 8:00 - 16:00 MST)
    • FTP site for file storage
  • Determine who is going to be on the team
    • Do you know anyone else who would greatly assist in the creation of this appliance?
      • Remo Rickli
      • Owen Brotherwood
      • Tristan Rhodes
  • Choose the distribution it will run on

    • Dapper (Ubuntu) will be nice because it is new, has a server install, Wink ;) (Owen: most secure) UPDATE: Dapper will not be ready by the deadline, so it looks like we better use 5.10 (Breezy).

  • Choose an official name for the appliance

    • Network Discovery Appliance (This is the most descriptive, also similar to NeDi.)

    • OATMAN - One Appliance To Manage A/All/Any Networks (Tristan is withdrawing this proposed name)
  • Should a graphical desktop be installed, or will this be a headless server? (Owen: headless with ssh www-server and X)
    • UPDATE: Tristan wants to use the default Ubuntu install, minus some apps. This allows non-Linux people to admin the box.
      • More points are given to smaller appliances
      • If there is no GUI desktop, how will users change the IP settings, install security updates, restart the box, restart services, etc.
      • Perhaps we should install Webmin? (Owen: yes most secure all root logged, no root needed with webmin)

      • Can security updates be automated with cron? Answer: Yes! AutomaticSecurityUpdates (Owen: is this production secure)

        • UPDATE: Not necessary now that users have the GUI

  • Get SSL working with NeDI using a self-signed certificate (See here: OpenSSL )

  • Owen addition for consideration
    • Use Nedi as much as possible as a good base to put Open Source software around, either directly or because Nedi DB can be used to generate configuration files
    • Give Nedi a home so that it has a working distro that people can try Nedi from without reading to much up about "How To" and more on now to use Nedi correctly, securly and productivly
  • REMEMBER: Development is progressing slowly, so we should only include the basics so that we can complete in time. Focus on Nedi
  • What other applications should we include in this appliance?
    • Netflow collector and analyzer (nfdump/nfsen) ???
    • Syslog (syslog-ng, php-syslog-ng) (Nedi ?)
    • TFTP (tftpd, webmin tftp module)
    • RADIUS server (FreeRADIUS and Nedi or dialupadmin GUI)

    • TACACS+ (http://www.networkforums.net/index.php, http://www.shrubbery.net/tac_plus/ or "apt-get install tac_plus")

    • SSH server
    • TRAP receiver (Nedi?)
    • RRD based graph tools.. Cacti (Nedi intergration?)
  • Having saved so much time for Network Guys with this project, then they should have time to do audit and control
    • IOS/PIX Benchmarks and RAT for Unix

Blogs

Owen's Blog

Contactable

Tristan's Blog

Given the rate of progress so far, we might need to reduce the scope of the project. Basically, just show off NeDi. Wink ;)

Steps to get the tools installed... 

apt-get install build-essential
apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r)
apt-get install cpp-3.4 gcc-3.4
export CC=gcc-3.4
sudo ./vmware-install.pl

Remo's Blog

Links

Distro specific

Applications

OpenSourceNetworkManagementServer (last edited 2008-08-06 17:00:16 by localhost)