NOTICE: All attendees who have successfully RSVP'd by 22-SEP-2003 16:00 should have already received an "RSVP-ACK" EMail. If you did NOT receive this email, you are probably NOT registered and you may not be able to get past security.
Introduction
Note: Since the TECHXNY/PCEXPO Show is being held at the Javits Center on September 16th through 18th, we moved the Unigroup meeting a couple days forward to Tuesday, September 23rd in order to avoid the conflict.
Pre-Meeting Presentation Introduction:
One of our Unigroup members, Josh Birnbaum of Noorg, Inc., has developed an Open Source Project called "ifchk", which is a tool which provides Host Based Promiscuous Mode Detection. Josh will give us a mini-presentation on "ifchk" at our November 2003 meeting, prior to the main presentation which is scheduled to be IPv6 and IP Management. At our September meeting, Josh will briefly describe his project and give us a brief introduction to "ifchk" and his upcoming talk.
Main Presentation Introduction:
It is possible to monitor and administer a small number of computers individually, for example, by running an interactive session on each one. We could also create various smart scripts performing the monitoring functions automatically locally and notifying the administrator about the exceptions by, say, e-mail. However, this approach has obvious limitations as the number of servers increases for it demands a manual modification of the local scripts should the threshold values or the e-mail address change. In general, we want to have available one centralized point (management station) where we could set up the thresholds and process the notifications about the exceptions. We prefer to have a unified, simple installation and configuration of the part of the monitoring software which runs on the managed nodes since that would allow for more robust and automated installation procedures for a large number of the systems. Also, we prefer such a monitoring method which would work for different platforms that can be found in the data-centers nowadays.
SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) fits the task well despite some limitations. It takes care of the network communication between the management station and the managed nodes. Also, it organizes the management information on the client side so that it can be retrieved and modified by the management station via a small number of SNMP operations. It does not process, filter or correlate the management information retrieved from the clients. It passes the information to other application programs, or put differently, the management applications take advantage of SNMP in order to communicate with their clients. One of the compelling reasons for using SNMP is the fact that the SNMP daemon or service is a part of the standard installation of all major modern operating systems. The enterprise-grade database systems, firewalls and other applications often contain an SNMP module which can communicate the application specific management information. The components of the network infrastructure such as routers or switches support SNMP, also many other devices such as the un-interruptible power supplies allow for the installation of a card with an embedded SNMP daemon. Therefore, with a relatively little extra burden caused by the planning and the configuration we can have a multi-platform, network monitoring capability based on open standards.
SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS:
---------------------
* IN ORDER TO PASS THROUGH SECURITY AT CHASE, WE NEED YOU TO RSVP
* PRIOR TO THURSDAY, SO WE CAN GET YOUR NAME ON THE ATTENDEE LIST.
* ADVANCE REGISTRATION AND PHOTO ID ARE REQUIRED!
-- RSVP DEADLINE IS 22-SEP-2003 16:00 --
-- YOU WILL RECEIVE AN RSVP ACK MESSAGE WHEN YOU ARE REGISTERED --
Please RSVP if you know you are attending or if you think you may
be attending. This will help us arrange for a letter to security
for all of Unigroup. It will also help us to determine the correct
amount of food and refreshments.
To REGISTER for this event, please RSVP by:
a) If at all possible, please use the Unigroup Registration Page.
This will allow us to have some automation in the registration process.
b) If you have no web access and you really must EMail us, send an
EMail containing the FIRST and LAST NAMEs of the persons attending
to the Unigroup RSVP Address:
unigroup-rsvp@ unigroup.org
The EMail subject should start with "RSVP".
You may optionally include your contact phone number (that day)
or other current information.
Sample EMail:
RSVP LastName FirstName your_email@domain.dom 000-000-0000
ALSO: Do NOT give us an email address which is over quota
and cannot receive any new email. This causes us to receive
bounces from your address when we send out the RSVP-ACKs.
You must have a working and valid email address in order
to get on the Unigroup Meeting Attendee List which will
grant you access to our meetings. Be sure to proof-read
your email address before submitting the RSVP request.
Please continue to check the Unigroup web site:
http://www.unigroup.org
for any last minute updates concerning this meeting. Please
check your email for any last minute announcements prior to the
meeting. Note that only the Attendee First and Last Names will
be provided to Chase Security.
Directions
The 1CMP building is situated: South of Liberty Street, North of Pine Street, East of Broad/Nassau Street and West of William Street. The building is one block east of Broadway, right behind 140 Broadway.
The closest entrance to the conference center is from Nassau Street, first elevator bank from the Nassau Street entrance.
The building is on a raised platform. Walk up the outside stairs at Nassau Street and head for the guard's station at the south-west corner of the building. Tell the guards you are heading for Unigroup. They will inspect your ID and carry-ins and direct you to the meeting facility, assuming you are on the Unigroup RSVP list.
Once you get upstairs, enter the conference facility through its main doors. There is a bank of large monitors to the left of the entrance which should direct you to the Unigroup meeting room (the room may vary from month to month). To the right of the main entrance is the concierge's desk, ask for help there if you need anything. The conference facility has two levels, keep in mind that the Unigroup meeting may be up the staircase on its upper level.
As always, also look out for Unigroup signs marking the path to the meeting room. Also note, if you come early, we may not have our own signs in place yet (we have to commute there too).
Transit By Train: Take the J/M/Z to Broad Street and walk 1 block North to Pine St. Take the 4/5 to Wall Street and walk North to Pine St., then East to Broad St. Take the 2/3 to Wall Street, the North West exit is inside the Chase complex, else you will need to walk a block North and West. See MTA Downtown NYC Map (pdf) for detailed mass transit information.
Outline of the Talk
Outline of Followup Presentation:
Web Resources:
The script: http://www.photonfield.net/snmp-monitor.html
Articles: 1. Remote Monitoring with SNMP by J. Skvarcek
;login;, October 2002
2. Remote Monitoring with SNMP: A Practical Example by
J. Skvarcek, ;login:, February 2003
Books: Essential SNMP by D.R. Mauro and K.J. Schmidt
O'Reilly 2001
Understanding SNMP MIBs by D. Perkins and E. McGinnis
Prentice Hall 1997
SNMP Network Management by P. Simoneau
McGraw-Hill 1999
Practical Guide to SNMP v3 and Network Management
by D. Zeltserman
Prentice Hall 1999
Sites: NET-SNMP (UCD-SNMP)
http://net-snmp.sourceforge.net/
HP OpenView
http://www.openview.hp.com/
IBM Tivoli Netview
http://www.tivoli.com/products/index/netview/
GxSNMP
http://www.gxsnmp.org/
RFC
http://www.ietf.org/rfc.html
SNMP v3
http://www.ibr.cs.tu-bs.de/projects/snmpv3/
The details of the standardization of SNMP v3
http://www.ietf.org/IESG/actions.html
Giveaways:
O'Reilly has been kind enough to provide us with some of their books, which we will continue to raffle off as giveaways at our meetings. O'Reilly has also provided us with a Discount Code for purchases made on their web site.
Addison-Wesley Professional/Prentice Hall PTR has been kind enough to provide us with some of their books, which we will raffle off as giveaways at our meetings.
Unigroup would like to thank both companies for the support provided by their User Group programs.
SPECIAL GIVEAWAY: All attendees will receive Discount Coupons at Barnes & Noble Bookstores... 20% off the purchase of the following AW/PTR books: The Art of Unix Programming, Linux on the Mainframe, Linux Administration Handbook.
Speaker Biographies
Jozef Skvarcek programmed high performance parallel numerical simulations during his post-graduate studies at the City University of New York. Since January 2000 he has been working for Datek Online and Ameritrade as a System Engineer. The Unix System Administration is not only his job but also his hobby. Jozef is a long time Unigroup member and currently also serves on the Unigroup Board of Directors. Jozef was also our speaker for our Beuwolf Cluster meeting.
Marc Spitzer has been working with computers since 1991, when he started out as a VAX/VMS operator. Since then he has worked as a System Administrator, Programmer and Security Analyst. Currently he is a independent consultant working in NYC. Marc has been a regular attendee at Unigroup meetings during the past year.
Company Biography
Both speakers are representing themselves.
Fee Schedule
Yearly Membership (includes all meetings): $ 50.00
* Non-Member Single Meeting: $ 20.00
Student Yearly Membership: $ 20.00
Non-Member Student Single Meeting (with ID): $ 5.00
Cash, Check, American Express.
* Employees of JPM/Chase (with ID) can attend general meetings
at NO CHARGE.
==> Unigroup is the Greater NYC Regional Area Affiliate
of UniForum - an International Unix Users Group.
Our Joint Membership Program with UniForum is currently
on hold due to circumstances at UniForum.
For information about UniForum visit http://www.uniforum.org.
Food and Refreshments
Complimentary Food and Refreshments will be served. This includes sandwiches such as turkey, roast beef, chicken, tuna and grilled eggplant, brownies, cookies, bottled water and assorted beverages.
Please join us for this meeting, you won't want to miss it!
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