In the previous blog post, I explained how to monitor your Nutanix cluster on Centreon using SNMP v2c.

In this new blog post, I’ll explain how to monitor your Nutanix cluster on Centreon using SNMP v3.

Prerequisites

There are a few prerequisites you must meet to add your Nutanix cluster to the Centreon solution. Here’s a list of what you need:

• A Nutanix cluster with admin access to the web interface
• A running Centreon server with the Nutanix connector installed
• SSH access to the Centreon VM
• Traffic must be allowed through the firewall

Configuring SNMP v3 on the Nutanix Cluster

To configure SNMP on your Nutanix cluster, start by connecting to the Prism Element and then going to “Settings > SNMP”. Check “Enable SNMP” and click “+ New Transport” to add port 161 in UDP:

Then, in “Users” click on “New User”, enter a username as well as a private key pair in AES and authentication key in SHA:

In my case, I’ve entered the following information because it’s for lab purposes only, but I recommend you enter much more complex information:

• Username: snmp-centreon
• Priv Key: snmp-priv-key
• Auth Key: snmp-auth-key

Make a note of the Username, Priv Key, and Auth Key; we’ll need them later. The configuration is complete on the Nutanix side; now let’s move on to the Centreon configuration.

Adding a Nutanix Cluster to Centreon

To add your Nutanix cluster to Centreon, log in to your monitoring system’s web interface, go to “Configuration > Hosts” and click “Add”:

On the page that appears, there is a first block of information to fill in:

• 1: Cluster name
• 2: Cluster IP address
• 3: SNMP version 3
• 4: The Centreon server that will monitor the cluster
• 5: The time zone associated with your cluster
• 6: The templates you wish to add
• 7: Check “Yes” to ensure that all services associated with the previously added templates are automatically created

On the second part of the page, there are a few things to configure, including the amplitude and frequency of checks, and especially the “SNMPEXTRAOPTIONS” field, which lets us configure the credentials created earlier:

The command line syntax to enter in SNMPEXTRAOPTIONS is:

--snmp-username='snmp-centreon' --authprotocol='SHA' --authpassphrase='snmp-auth-key' --privprotocol='AES'--privpassphrase='snmp-priv-key'

Remember to check the “Password” box to hide sensitive information:

Once all the information has been entered, confirm so that the new host is created on the server. You must then export the configuration to the pollers. To do this, click on “Pollers” in the top left corner, then on “Export configuration”:

Then click on “Export & Reload” in the small window that appears:

To check that your host is being taken into account, go to “Monitoring > Resources Status”, your first checks should start to come up:

If all goes as planned, you should have all your probes green within minutes!

Troubleshooting

If you unfortunately have a monitor that looks like this:

I recommend checking the following:

• Open SNMP streams (port 161/UDP) in the firewall
• Configure the AuthKey/PrivKey pair and username