Device Types

This documentation applies to NMS version 5.4. An online version of the software can be found here.

The Device Type page enables you to use discovery to classify and organize devices. Device types enable you to associate a collection of object types to multiple devices. Each device can belong to multiple device types. The device type concept enables you to organize devices for polling purposes which expedites policy definition and enables you to run manufacturer independent reports for similar but not identical objects. For end users, device types appear in all device group lists and provide an additional method to secure, sort, and filter devices.

You can define rules to automatically add devices, across multiple manufacturers/products, that implement the "same" MIBs to device types. Device type rules run during discovery to add the devices to the device types you create. You can manually pin devices to device types and the Device Manager also enables you to pin devices to device types.

To access the Device Types page from the navigation bar, click the Administration menu, select Monitoring Configuration, and then select Device Types.

images/download/attachments/6520995/devicetypes.png

Manage Device Type Hierarchy

The device type hierarchy appears on the left. There are two first level device types; SevOne Device Types and Custom Device Types. SevOne Device Types provide common, logical, poll focused, collections of devices that are used in starter set reports, policies, etc. You cannot edit or delete the SevOne Device Types. Custom Device Types provide the ability to monitor more diverse devices and cutting edge technologies. Check boxes enable you to simultaneously manage the metadata values, drag and drop, and delete multiple device types.

Select the custom device type under which to add a new device type.
Click Add Device Types to display a pop-up.
1. In the Device Type Name field, enter the device type name.
2. Click Save on the pop-up.
- Click to edit the values for the metadata attributes you want to associate with the device types. See the Manage Metadata Values section below.
- Click to edit a device type name.
Drag and drop device types to different places in the custom device type hierarchy.
- Click to delete the device group. When you delete a device group that has associated policies, a message appears to inform you that associated policies will be deleted.
1. On the message, click View Policies to display the Policy Association pop-up that lists the policies associated to the device group.
2. Select the policies to move and click Reassign Selected or click Reassign All to display a pop-up that enables you to select the device group to which to move the policies.
3. On the pop-up, click the drop-down and select the device group to which to move the policies and click OK.
4. Click Done to move the policies.

Manage Metadata Values

The images/download/attachments/6520995/metadata.png in the device type hierarchy Actions column provides access to the Edit Metadata pop-up that enables you to manage the values for the metadata attributes you want to associate with the device type. The Metadata Schema page enables you to manage metadata attributes.

Click in the Actions column to display the Edit Metadata pop-up.
Click in the Actions column to make the Values field editable.
In the Values field, enter the value for the attribute with the applicable attribute type specific format.
- Date/Time: Must have a valid date and time format and can use natural language processing such as; 3 Thursdays ago at 5pm.
- Integer: Type: Value must be numeric.
- IP Address: Must use one of the following formats:
  - IPv4: 172.16.254.1
  - IPv6: 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1 or 10.1.1.100 or 10.1.1.100/16
- Latitude and Longitude: Must have valid coordinates that are decimal values: -90.00 to 90.00 values for Latitude and -180.00 to 180.00 for Longitude
- MAC Address: Must use the following format: 0A:00:27:00:00:00
- Text (Validated): Supports up to 1024 UTF-16 characters including PCRE regex that uses preg-match (perform a regular expression match) to validate the regular expression you enter against the attribute definition from the Metadata Schema page.
- Text: Supports up to 65K UTF-16 varchar characters.
- URL: Complete the following fields:
  - Link Display Text: Enter the text to display in reports as the link caption.
  - URL: Enter the URL. Must have FQDN validation, supports username prefix, ports, protocol AND ?/& for HTTP GET variables, and optional additional PCRE regex for validation, and must be fewer than 255 characters.
Click Update to save the value.

Device Type Membership Rules

Click on a device type in the hierarchy to display the device type membership rules in the upper section on the right. Membership rules enable you to automatically add devices to the device type when the SNMP plugin discovers devices that contain objects that meet the rule criteria. Rules are case sensitive and you can use Perl Regular Expressions to create rules.

Click Add Rule or click to display the Add/Edit Device Type Membership Rule pop-up. Each rule requires only one field. If you populate several fields per rule, the criteria you enter in that rule are cumulative.

Example: Enter Remote in the Name field and enter ^192\.168 in the Management IP Address field in the same rule criteria row. The device must have both Remote in the name AND an IP address that starts with 192.168 to be added to the device type.
- Device Name - Enter the name of the devices to add to the device type (wild cards are implied).
- Device Description - Enter the description of the devices to add to the device type.
- Management IP Address - Enter the IP address of the devices to add to the device type (^192\.168 adds all devices whose IP address starts with 192.168).
- sysDescr - Enter the text you get when you SNMP walk the sysDescr OID.
- sysContact – Enter the text you get when you SNMP walk the sysContact OID.
- sysLocation - Enter the text you get when you SNMP walk the sysLocation OID.
- sysName – Enter the text you get when you walk the sysName OID.
- sysObjectID - Enter the text you get when you SNMP walk the sysObjectID OID.
- Walkable OID – Enter the number of the OID to walk.
Click Save to save the rule criteria.
Repeat these steps to add additional rules to use the OR Boolean.

Example: Enter Remote in the Name field in the first row in the rule table then click Create Rule. Enter ^192\.168 in the second row in the rule table. The device can have either Remote in the name OR an IP address that starts with 192.168 to be added to the device type.

Object Types

The Object Types tab in the lower right section contains two groups of object types Inherited and Local. The Object Types tab displays the following information.

Object Types - Displays the list of object types that are associated to the device type.
Parent Path - Displays the path to the parent of the object type.
Plugin - Displays the name of the plugin that polls the object type.
Defined In - Displays Local for object types that are defined at this level in the Device Type hierarchy or displays a link that navigates you to the level in the Device Types hierarchy from where the object type inherits its definition.

The Object Types tab enables you to associate the SNMP object types you want the SNMP Plugin to attempt to poll on the devices that are members of the device type.

On the Object Types tab, click Associate to display the Associate pop-up.
Select the check box for each object type to poll on the devices that are members of the device type.
Click Associate on the pop-up to associate the object types to the device type.

Manage SNMP Object Types

The Object Types tab duplicates the functionality of the Object Types page to enable you to add and edit SNMP object types. Perform the following steps to manage SNMP object types. For interfaces and most SNMP objects, there is an OID that is dedicated to provide the index number. The value of each OID is also the index, which simplifies how to obtain the proper indexes.

Example: Walk ifIndex to yield the following:
RFC1213-MIB::ifIndex.1 = INTEGER: 1
RFC1213-MIB::ifIndex.2 = INTEGER: 2
RFC1213-MIB::ifIndex.8 = INTEGER: 8

Each field on the Add/Edit SNMP Object Type pop-up has a corresponding check box on the right side to enable you to make changes at this level of the hierarchy and below. The changes you make when you select the right-hand check box override and do not affect the parent object type definition.

Click Add then SNMP or click to display the Add/Edit SNMP Object Type pop-up.
In the Name field, enter the object type name.
Click the Indexed By to display the SNMP OID Browser where you select an index OID.
Select the Reverse Engineer check box to have instances of this object type be uniquely identified by evaluating the OID of the SNMP object specified in the Indexed By field, as opposed to its value. How the values encoded within the OID are evaluated is based on the configuration of the Index Keys field. You should leave this check box selected for the vast majority of object types.
The Index Keys fields enable you to select the index keys to use to determine how to treat the remaining octets after the index. In the Possible Values field, select index keys to assign to the object type (use Ctrl or Shift keys to multi-select) then move the index keys to the Index Keys field. Index keys in the Index Keys field are assigned to the object type and they display in the sequence in which they appear listed. Possible values include the following:
- Integer - A single number that indicates there is a constant amount of numbers following each OID.
- String - A string prefixed with the string length. This typically appears with double quotes.
- String (Implied) - A string with no length information. This must only occur as the last index value.
- Variable - A variable amount of numbers prefixed with the amount of items. This is typically used for IPv4 versus IPv6 indexes.
- Variable (Implied) - A Variable amount of numbers, but with no length information. This must occur as the last index value. This can be used to "eat up" the remainder of the index.
Click the Name Expression to display the SNMP OID Browser where you select an OID that results in a unique name for all object types on a device.
Click the Description Expression to display the SNMP OID Browser where you select an OID to add additional information about the object type.
Click the Subtype to display the SNMP OID Browser where you select an OID to define a subtype for the object type (used for thresholds and reports). This can generate the following variables:
- - [TYPE]: The numerical value of the subtype.
- - [TYPE]: The name of the subtype.
- - [TYPE]: The description of the subtype.
Click the Assert to display the SNMP OID Browser where you select the OID to use in the assert expression that generates a list of individual object indexes. This is skipped if the object does not pass the assert expression. No variables are generated.

Example: To match only Ethernet interfaces and ignore everything else, enter the following statement.
ifType == 6
This separates memory from disks in the Host Resources MIB; both use hrStorageIndex, but each has a different value for hrStorageType. You should not modify the default Interface definition.
Click the Last-change OID to display the SNMP OID Browser where you select an OID for the SNMP plugin to use to determine if a change was made to the object type since it was last polled. If the object type changed, the SNMP plugin invalidates the current data.
Click the Admin-status to display the SNMP OID Browser. Select an OID for the SNMP plugin to use to determine the administrative status of the object.
Click the Oper-status to display the SNMP OID Browser. Select an OID for the SNMP plugin to use to determine the operational status of the object.
In the Variable field, enter the variables, expressions, and operators to you want the SNMP plugin to evaluate first for use with the other fields.
Click Edit Subtypes to display the Object Subtype Manager where you manage the object subtypes.
Click Save.

Device Type Membership

The Device Type Membership tab displays the devices that are members of the device type. When you pin a device to a device type, rules do not affect the device's membership and you must manually unpin the device to remove its membership. When a rule adds a device to a device type, if you change the rule, the devices that were added by the rule can automatically be removed from the device type.

- Indicates the device is a member that was pinned to the device type at this level.
- Indicates the device is a member that was pinned to a lower level device type.
– Indicates the device is a member that was added by a device type membership rule at this level.
- Indicates the device is a member that was added by a device type membership rule at a lower level.

Membership Management

The Pin Devices button enables you to pin devices to the device type and images/download/attachments/6520995/gear.png enables you to pin or unpin devices that are members of the type.

Click Pin Devices to display a pop-up that displays all devices in SevOne NMS.
1. Select the check box for each device to pin to the device type.
2. Click Pin to Type on the pop-up to pin the devices you select to the device type.
In the Membership list, select the check box for each device to pin to the device type, click , and select Pin Selected Devices to pin the devices you select to the device type.
Select the check box for each device to unpin from the device type, click , and select Unpin Selected Devices to unpin the devices you select from the device type. If you pin a device that was added by a rule, when you unpin the device it is removed from the membership list. If you do not change the rule, the device appears in the list again upon the next discovery.

Table of Contents (Start)

Device Types

Manage Device Type Hierarchy

Manage Metadata Values

Device Type Membership Rules

Object Types

Manage SNMP Object Types

Device Type Membership

Membership Management