Technical data

Conﬁguring SNMP

The Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is network management

technology that facilitates the management of a TCP/IP network or internet in a

vendor-independent manner. SNMP enables a network administrator to manage

the various network components using a set of well-known procedures understood

by all components, regardless of the vendor that manufactured them.

Conﬁguring SNMP on your OpenVMS system allows a remote SNMP

management client to obtain information about your host and to set system and

network parameters.

This chapter reviews key concepts of SNMP and describes:

• How to manage the SNMP service (Section 13.2)

• How to verify the installation of SNMP (Section 13.3)

• How to conﬁgure SNMP (Section 13.4)

• SNMP log ﬁles (Section 13.5)

• How to solve SNMP problems (Section 13.6)

For information about writing programs using SNMP, refer to the Compaq

TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS SNMP Programming and Reference guide.

13.1 Key Concepts

Systems using SNMP are divided into two categories:

• Management consoles, sometimes called clients, network management

stations, or directors

• Agents, sometimes called servers

The management console is the system that issues a query; the agents run on the

system being queried. Queries are sent and received in the form of protocol data

units (PDUs) inside SNMP messages, which are carried in user data protocol

(UDP) datagrams.

You can conﬁgure your host so that an SNMP client can obtain information about

your host and perform updates on your host’s management information base

(MIB) data items. For example, you can conﬁgure your host to:

• Respond to a client’s read requests (‘‘Gets’’) for network information.

• Process client write requests (‘‘Sets’’) on your host’s MIB data items.

• Send alert messages (‘‘traps’’) to a client as a result of events that might need

to be monitored (for example, an authentication failure).

Conﬁguring SNMP 13–1