[Devmon] Thoughts on SNMP failure

[Aiello, S. \(G. C. consultant\) <ste...@ge...>]

I was doing some general thinking the other day (something I normally
try to avoid). Anyways, let us say you configure a device to be
monitored via devmon. Now the device is up and monitored just fine. But
what happens if for some reason the the device is no longer capable of
responding to SNMP. Now it isn't 'down' IP is still pingable, just SNMP
service is locked/hung/whatever.

First question, is this situation rare ? If not, do you think there
should be some internal way for devmon to handle this ? Now, I could
setup a remote SNMP network test from the BB/Hobbit server to catch
this. But in X number of minutes your SNMP reports will be turning
purple (I hate purple). I was thinking that it would be great if devmon
performed a SNMP test on each device 1st. All SNMP devices would have
this one common test, call it whatever you like 'snmp'. If devmon can
not communicate with the device via SNMP, this test would go red, and
all other tests for that device would get a clear status.  Similar to
how BB/Hobbit perform remote network tests; if conn is red, all other
remote net tests go clear for the device.

If you wanted to get fancy, you could have the 'snmp' conn test
configureable for each device to pull basic device information, i.e.
Model #, Software/Hardware revision, etc.

Ofcourse this would add runtime overhead, something I know Eric is
against. Just figured I would bring it up.