Building Probe Templates – editing CFX files

Most Nimsoft probes are written with configuration files that can be edited with a text editor such as notepad or wordpad. Editing these probe configuration files can save you time when creating probe templates and gives you another option in configuring probes in the Nimsoft archive without using a GUI.

You may have experienced a situation in which you need to deploy the same probe configuration to multiple robots. One way to accomplish this is configure a probe on a robot using the probe’s GUI. After configuring the probe, you can drag and drop the probe back into the NMS archive, where it can be renamed and basically saved as a probe template. This new template can now be applied to other robots.

The other option you have is to edit the cfx file of a probe package, essentially creating a template. This can sometimes be easier than configuring the probe template via the probe GUI.

In this article, by editing cfx files, we will create probe templates that will enable various monitoring for two different probes: cdm and ntevl. In the cdm example, we will create a template that automatically enables all disks to be monitored against thresholds and all disk QoS to be published.

In the ntevl example, we’ll enable monitoring for all services. Instead of opening each probe GUI for these probes and selecting what we want monitored, we can edit the cfx file of each probe and deploy that configuration globally, saving us time.

Let’s start with the cdm probe.

1.    Open your NMS archive in your Infrastructure Manager.

2.    Open the cdm probe package by right-clicking on the cdm probe and selecting Edit, as seen below.

[ Click the image for a larger version ]

3.    In the cdm probe package, you will see tabs for each operating system the probe can be deployed on. Note: each OS you want this template deployed requires a separate cfx file. Find the OS tab that you would like to deploy this template to. Each OS tab will have a Files subtab. Right-click on the cdm.cfx file and click Edit file...

[ Click the image for a larger version ]

4.    We can edit the cfx file with tags denoting how our cdm probe should monitor the robot it is placed on. For example, editing the loglevel field from “loglevel = 0” to “loglevel = 5”, and then deploying this new probe packge to a robot, changes the log level of the cdm probe on that robot.

[ Click the image for a larger version ]

5.    Below is a type of cfx file that can be used for reference. This cfx file reinitializes disk discovery, causing whichever robot this config is placed on to have its disks re-read by the cdm probe.

The key to forcing a rediscover is to use the 'clear' tag within the <fixed> section. This will remove existing disks, and force a rediscovery after the next restart. We are overwriting various entries in the configuration file, such as interval, samples, activating the alarms, etc. We can also just append to the configuration files without using the overwrite tage. Once we deploy this new probe package, the cfg file on the robot for where this probe is deployed to is overwritten/appended depending on the tags we use.

<disk> overwrite
interval = 15 min
samples = 4
<alarm> overwrite
active = yes
<connections> clear
</connections>
<fixed> clear
</fixed>
</alarm>
<fixed_default> overwrite
active = yes
qos_disk_usage = yes
qos_disk_usage_perc = yes
percent = yes
<error> overwrite
active = yes
threshold = 10
message = DiskError
</error>
<warning> overwrite
active = yes
threshold = 15
message = DiskWarning
</warning>
</fixed_default>
</disk>
<computer>

The same type of concept can be used for other probes. In the next example, we highlight how easy it is to configure the ntservices probe to monitor all services and their actual state. For instance, any automatic service that is running will be monitored, and you will be alerted if the service ever goes down. The "clear" on the services section is to get the probe to rediscover the services and apply the default.

<setup>
   <default>
      active = yes
      action = auto
   </default>
</setup>
<services> clear
</services>

This article has only two examples of how powerful knowing how to edit cfx files for probe packages can be. You can just as easily edit more cfx files in other probe packages within your NMS archive. Mastering how to build templates out of probe packages using the methods above will help you save time. Good luck!